Quotes about agency

There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part of the mentally ill. But what do you do if you’re a paid-up member of the mentally ill populace in question? Do you curl up into a ball and give up? No, you look for solutions. Ultimately, it’s about keeping despair at bay and sometimes simple things like running, taking up a hobby, doing chari

Educated people, of course, know that perception, cognition, language, and emotion are rooted in the brain. But it is still tempting to think of the brain as it was shown in old educational cartoons, as a control panel with gauges and levers operated by a user — the self, the soul, the ghost, the person, the “me.” But cognitive neuroscience is showing that the self, too, is just another network of brain systems. [C]ognitive neuroscientists have not only exorcised the ghost but have shown that th

When you permit an outside agency to control your feelings and emotions at frequent intervals for a prolonged period, your system will soon get into the habit of submitting to the control of this outside agency, and will not respond any longer to any effort that the will may make to regain its original power of control.

The single word that directs a person’s fate and ultimately the fates of those she comes in contact with is of course a common subject of entertainments and moralizing stories, but if everyone were to consider all the possible consequences of all one’s possible choices, no one would move a millimeter, or even dare to breathe for fear of the ultimate results.

[I]t is a mistake to rush to impose the individual ethical responsibility that the corporate structure deflects. This is the temptation of the ethical which, as Zizek has argued, the capitalist system is using in order to protect itself in the wake of the credit crisis - the blame will be put on supposedly pathological individuals, those’ abusing the system’, rather than on the system itself. But the evasion is actually a two step procedure - since structure will often be invoked (either implici

...she thought of him as a person who did not have a normal spine, but had instead, a firm reed of goodness.

There is an intentional disregard for human health and safety in many government agencies that are tasked with protecting it.

Partnership means she is of equal rank to you, Raven', Obiakor continued...'Don't play games with her.

I do not believe any power can possess the mind of a man or woman... I believe in God-given free will, you see. I think nothing is forced on us, except by other people like ourselves. I think our choices are our own.

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

I don't want to be told that it's the people with power over us who are guilty, that we're innocent slaves, that we're not guilty because we're not free. I am free! I'm building a Vernichtungslager; I have to answer to the people who'll be gassed here. I can say "No". There's nothing can stop me—as long as I can find the strength to face my destruction.

Each time we make a choice we are either moving toward freedom and prosperity or bondage and misery.

Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God's greatest gift to man.

One bright sunny day at a successful Literary Agency…Literary Agent: “So, Tina – we asked you to try and write a children’s story…”Tina: “Uh-huh.

Be good.See good.Choose good.It's a no-brainer.

Whether we do it consciously or subconsciously, we tend to organize our lives to display our identity as accurately as possible. Our lifestyle choices often reveal our values, or at least what we’d like people to perceive as our values…as we make our everyday choices, we continuously calculate not just which choices best match who we are and what we want but also how those choices will be interpreted by others. We look for cues in our social environment to figure out what others think of this or

Corrupt governments are run by corrupt politicians that run corrupt law enforcement agencies.

The will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a faculty can be found only in rational beings.

He loved me and didn't want me hurt. What was worse, he didn't even understand that I had the right to be hurt.

Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? And could you in any way protect your son from Sansara? How could you? By means of teachings, prayer, admonition? My dear, have you entirely forgotten that story, that story containing so many lessons, that story about Siddhartha, a Brahman's son, which you once told me here on this very spot? Who has kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Sansara, from sin, from greed, from foo

After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine.

Feeling that one has some leverage upon something, even by proxy or association, makes one a great deal more interested in it.

What remains to be done must be done by you; since in order not to deprive us of our free will and such share of glory as belongs to us, God will not do everything himself.

Nobody seems to know which came first; egg or chicken – except of course for agents of the Time Saving Agency – who can find out anything about, well – anything. The only trouble is, they aren’t talking – however, you can take it from me – they know. The answer to these and other puzzles are kept safe and secure behind fire-walls and thick security doors secured with, er – time-locks, where one could possibly find answers to many other troubling questions, and not all of them necessarily relatin

The Marquess shrugged. “I’m a shadow. I do know I am a shadow, Iago. I know most of the time. It’s only when I cannot bear how everyone looks at me down here that I make myself forget it. Shadows are the other side of yourself. I had longings to be good, even then. I was just stronger than my wanting. I’m stronger than anything, really, when I want to be.” The Marquess’s hair turned white as the snow. “Do you know, we’re right underneath Springtime Parish? This place is the opposite of springtim

Imagine if you will:At the highly secretive, largely independent, inter-dimensional and (inevitably) clandestine organization called the Time Saving Agency, there is a saying that goes: ‘You can’t break an omelet without first making eggs’. While this may appear to be a rather flippant little idiom, there is – as is usually the case, far more to it than meets the eye.

Under the heading of "defense mechanisms,” psychoanalysis describes a number of ways in which a person becomes alienated from himself. For example, repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection. These "mechanisms" are often described in psychoanalytic terms as themselves "unconscious,” that is, the person himself appears to be unaware that he is doing this to himself. Even when a person develops sufficient insight to see that "splitting", for example, is going on, he usually experience

You can't have all the answers now or you could never grow from making a choice. If you want to grow, you must face adversity and make decisions without having all the answers.

Not every illness can be overcome. But many people allow illness to disfigure their lives more than it should. They cave in needlessly. They ignore and weaken whatever powers they have for standing erect. There is always a margin within which life can be lived with meaning and even with a certain measure of joy, despite illness.

We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.

Life isn’t always kind. It isn’t gentle and loving or sympathetic to the pains and sorrows of humanity. I, however, as an individual in control of my own actions, can be kind and loving, gentle and sympathetic to those around me, and in the process improve what life is for everyone.

But if everything's already decided, then what's the point of living? - Tom, pg 437

Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us.

Be happy. Be happy for no reason at all. Believe it or not, you have the ability and free agency to make that choice.

Cosmopolitanism seeks a _we_ that does not rely on the exclusion of _others_ but, instead, recognizes and confirms each other as part of the planetary _we_. The cosmopolitan _we_ is not grounded in a monolithic sameness but in a constant alterity and _ethical singularity_ of each individual human person regardless of one's national origin and belonging, religious affiliation, gender, race and ethnicity, class ability, or sexuality.

When you were making excuses someone else was making enterprise.

No one attribute so clearly distinguishes man as does the intelligent will or the will to act intelligently. It was by the exercise of their wills that spiritual beings in the beginning gathered information rapidly or slowly, acquired experiences freely or laboriously. Through the exercise of their wills they grew, remained passive, or retrograded, for with living things motion in any direction is possible.

We are the masters of our own destinies, and only we can allow our hearts to be filled, and enable our souls to be happy. No amount of power or mercy can change a heart from empty to whole, or change the end of a will from everlasting sadness to eternal joy.

How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values?The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonis

I fell in love with him. But I don't just stay with him by default as if there's no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.

Yes, our Father has a plan, Ciminae,” he said. “But he leaves it up to his children to accept his will. It is their agency. He cannot force his will upon them. If he did, he would cease to be God. They . . . we must choose for ourselves to accept his will with unbreakable faith in our Father. That is when the Father moves us to do his will.” (The Spirit. From Book 2, "Worlds Without End: Aftermath," coming September 1, 2012)

There are two influences ever present in the world. One is constructive and elevating and comes from our Heavenly Father; the other is destructive and debasing and comes from Lucifer. We have our agency and make our own choice in life subject to these unseen powers. There is a division line well defined that separates the Lord's territory from Lucifer's. If we live on the Lord's side of the line Lucifer cannot come there to influence us, but if we cross the line into his territory we are in his

IF you want to be a winner than follow one simple rule and feed it in your mind. Take each task and work as " Do it yourself project.

Almost two hundred sixty-six years ago on my home world, Earth, my forefathers did the same thing. They declared their independence and free agency from an enemy that oppressed them. No one at that time expected this rebellion force to win the war. They were severely outnumbered, and they were extremely inexperienced compared to their enemy. Despite those odds, they succeeded in winning the war, giving them their independence and freewill to choose. (Adrian Palmer, Worlds Without End: The Missio

Wealth isn't about money. It's about options...and you always have options. Choose wisely. Live wealthy.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.'Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

Individuals make history, but it's also a collective thing, a wave that people ride in their time, a wave made of individual actions. So ultimately history is another particle/wave duality that no one can parse or understand.

What was it like to live amidst such machines, to be familiar with them, to have them shape one's earliest intuitions about machinery: how it works, what it does, how it compares to living creatures?

You can’t change the past. You can’t even change the future, in the sense that you can only change the present one moment at a time, stubbornly, until the future unwinds itself into the stories of our lives.

God cries for us in the same way we cry for others. His tears most often spill over for the pain and suffering caused from the mortal misuse of a gift called agency. He will not revoke the gift. It was promised to us for the duration of our time on Earth. But He will hold each one of us accountable in the end for how we applied this power of agency.

If you feel like you don't fit into the world you inherited it is because you were born to help create a new one.

To completely understand me you must first accept that I am not you.

My dream is to create something so beautiful that it encourages people to present the best version of themselves to me everywhere I go.

Eternity will not cause our memories to fade, it will force our hearts to accept the past.

To struggle against the weight of sleep as reality eclipses the moon of your dreams is the purest sign of true love.

Cherish your existence, for memories become legacies and life can change in an instant.

Try to think of it as though we are rewriting history––the first time this experience occurred you and I never kissed in this Dream Machine room. But now when we leave here, and open our eyes again near the wall around the center of Constance, that kiss will be included in our memories of the day we first met. We could spend a lifetime recreating this moment here, meanwhile, not a single second of our lives would slip by back in our reality. Time seems to move differently inside of our memories.

As her feet beat the concrete ground beneath them, her chest began to ache. It had been a long time since she had run at a full sprint. She was, quite literally, running for her life, and leaving everything she had known before behind. Regardless of her past experiences, here she was, blindly following a girl, who was virtually a stranger, because she had promised to lead Eleanor to safety.

Eleanor had heard talk of the rebellion that existed inside the city of Constance before. Most of the information she gathered was considered an old fairy tale by the general public. There were a few stories here and there about people angered by their present living conditions, who had demanded that the center of Constance be held responsible for it. However, information was never passed between the five different sectors. Over the years the tales of the rebellion had become children’s bedtime

Here we go,” Phoenix said, turning back to Nora. “Try not to let this room scare you.

Every decision you make in life will stem from one of two options: love or fear. Choose love.

If man will not recognize the inequalities around him and voluntarily, through the gospel plan, come to the aid of his brother, he will find that through ‘a democratic process’ he will be forced to come to the aid of his brother. The government will take from the ‘haves’ and give to the ‘have nots.’ Both have lost their freedom. Those who ‘have,’ lost their freedom to give voluntarily of their own free will and in the way they desire. Those who ‘have not,’ lost their freedom because they did not

If it were said that without such bones and sinews and all the rest of them I should not be able to do what I think is right, it would be true; but to say that it is because of them that I do what I am doing, and not through choice of what is best - although my actions are controlled by Mind - would be a very lax and inaccurate form of expression.

Even if it doesn't alter or change the end result even in the slightest... making decisions based on convictions that you believe in... and walking your own path... has it's own merit and worth. There's something to be said for not having... even on regret.

I also had to come tonight to apologize. If you need to go to Mexico to finish this process off, then I understand. I was wrong to criticize you for it or even imply that I had some kind of say in it. One of the greatest things about you is that in the end, you always make smart decisions. Can’t always say the same for myself. Whatever you need to do, I’ll support you.

Some decisions in life naturally lead to an unhappy ending, leaving you sinking by degrees in a lake of quicksand.  And, unless someone reaches to pull you out, chances are you will drown in the consequences.