Rulon S. Wells

The Lord inspired the fathers of our country, our Revolutionary fathers, with this same spirit of human liberty, this right of free agency. This great struggle for liberty did not begin on this earth; it began before the foundations of it were laid. The Lord devised the plan whereby we might be liberated and made free and independent. The Lord designs that we shall be so. There was war in heaven before the foundations of this earth were laid. And what was that great conflict over? It was a struggle for the liberties of the children of God.

Elder Rulon S. Wells, Conference Report, April 1930, Second Day—Morning Meeting 70

Joseph Fielding Smith

What would man amount to without this free agency? He would be no better than a mechanical contrivance. He could not have acted for himself, but in all things would have been acted upon, and hence unable to have received a reward for meritorious conduct. He would have been an automaton; could have had no happiness nor misery, ‘neither sense nor insensibility,’ and such could hardly be called existence.

Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954–56], 1:64).

Robert D. Hales

Agency leads us to act: to seek that we may find, to ask that we may receive guidance from the Spirit, to knock on that door that leads to spiritual light and ultimately salvation. I bear special witness that our Savior Jesus Christ is the source of that light, even the Light and Life of the World. As we use our agency to follow Him, His light will grow within us brighter and brighter until that perfect day when we are welcomed into the presence of our Father in Heaven for all eternity.

Robert D. Hales, “To Act for Ourselves: The Gift and Blessings of Agency,” Ensign, May 2006,  4–8

Man's Search for Meaning

Reflecting on his horrendous wartime experiences, Viktor Frankl recalled: “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

 

Man’s Search for Meaning [1985], 86.

Sheri Dew

We are here to demonstrate by our choices that we want to be in the kingdom of God more than anything else.

Sheri Dew, Relief Society Sisterhood Day, South Bend, Indiana, March 23, 2002

Richard L. Evans

Life offers you two precious gifts.  One is time, the other, freedom of choice – the freedom to buy your time with what you will.  You are free to exchange your allotment of time for thrills. You may trade it for base desires. You may invest in greed. You may purchase with it vanity; you may spend your time in pursuit of material things. Yours is the freedom to choose. But these are not bargains, for in them you find no lasting satisfaction.

Richard L. Evans, Man’s Search for Happiness

Strength of Youth

Your Heavenly Father has given you agency.  While you are here on earth, you are being proven to see if you will use your agency to show your love for God by keeping His commandments.  You are accountable to Him for what you do with your abilities and how you spend your time. Do not idle away your time. Be willing to work hard. Choose to do many good things of your own free will.

 

For the Strength of Youth Pamplet, 4

ElRay L. Christiansen

It is your earthly life that you are now living, my young friends. You will live it but once. There will be no reruns, no repeat performances. What you are in this life determines where you will be throughout eternity. You made good in that pre-earth life. You were valiant there.  When you do take the wrong course, you are undoing the work of your prior existence, for there you struggled for ages to prepare for mortality where you now are.

ElRay L. Christiansen, “Three Important Questions,” Ensign, May 1974,  25

Bruce R. McConkie

Having their agency, all the spirits of men, while yet in the Eternal Presence, developed aptitudes, talents, capacities, and abilities of every sort, kind, and degree.  During the long expanse of life which then was, an infinite variety of talents and abilities came into being.  As the ages rolled, no two spirits remained alike.

 

Bruce R. McConkie, Mortal Messiah 1:23

C.S. Lewis

When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed.  And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself.  Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated.  On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is?  Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth?  If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly.  But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding.  In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (1952)