agency Quotes

“In my work, I’ve found that moving out of powerlessness, and even despair, requires hope. Hope is not an emotion: It’s a cognitive process - a thought process made up of what researcher C. R. Snyder called the trilogy of ‘goals, pathways, and agency.’ Hope happens when we can set goals, have the tenacity and perseverance to pursue those goals, and believe in our own abilities to act. Snyder also found that hope is learned. When boundaries, consistency, and support are all in place, children learn it from their parents, but even if we didn’t get it as kids, we can still learn hope as adults. It’s just tougher when we’re older because we have to resist and unlearn old habits, like the tendency to give up when things get tough.”

“Hope is a function of struggle. If we’re never allowed to fall or face adversity as children, we are denied the opportunity to develop the tenacity and sense of agency we need to be hopeful.”

“Not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half.”

“Decisions were a delight after the curse. I loved having the power to say yes or no, and refusing anything was a special pleasure.”

“If they were going to die in Japan, at least they could take a path that they and not their captors chose, declaring in this last act of life, that they remained sovereign over their own souls.”

“Good wombs have borne bad sons.”

One of the few advantages man has over other animals is the ability to choose the way to bring on his own death.

“But here, in our tunnel, we feel it no longer. The air is pure under the ground. There is no odor of men. And these three hours give us strength for our hours above the ground.”

“But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.”

“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.”

“Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when you leave the Home of the Students. You shall do that which the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you.”

“Every subject’s duty is the king’s, but every subject’s soul is his own.”

“I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.”

“He sighed. ‘Another year, another class — and for me another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.‘”

″‘(A guardian ad litem is) a person trained to work with kids in the family court, who determines what’s in the child’s best interests,’ Anna recites. ‘Or in other words, just another grown-up deciding what happens to me.‘”

“A major decision about me is being made, and no one’s bothered to ask the one person who most deserves it to speak her opinion.”

We must not expect God to get the devil off our backs. He has already defeated Satan and given us the ability and responsibility to take care of ourselves.

“And that’s all we are, Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood, until we—each one of us, individually—decide to become something else.”

“We do not have to love. We choose to love. No matter how much we may think we are loving, if we are in fact not loving, it is because we have chosen not to love and therefore do not love despite our good intentions.”

“Jill, of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of ‘altruism’ is the worst. People do what they want to, every time.”

″‘Don’t tell me from genetics. What’ve they got to do with it?’ said Crowley. ‘Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you’re going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he’ll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me.‘”

“But now George has TB and they tell me he may even die... Which adds to that darkness in my mind, all these DEATH things piling up suddenly -- But I cant believe old Zen Master George is going to allow his body to die.”

“If we allow more people to solve problems without permission, and if we tolerate (and don’t vilify) their mistakes, then we enable a much larger set of problems to be addressed. When a random problem pops up in this scenario, it causes no panic, because the threat of failure has been defanged.”

“You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”

“If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”

″‘Come,’ I said, with decision, ‘we will go back; your health is precious.‘”

“It is always my choice.”