Agency Quotes

“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.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“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.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“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.”
― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

“They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archtype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshipped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

“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.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I am so tired - so tired of being of being whirled on through all these phases of my life, in which nothing abides by me, no creature, no place; it is like the circle in which the victims of earthly passion eddy continually.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“It's my life, I think with amazement, and it's beautiful, and I can paint it any color I want to.”
― Ann Liang, I Am Not Jessica Chen

“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 power. By keeping the commandments of the Lord we are safe on His side of the line, but if we disobey His teachings we voluntarily cross into the zone of temptation and invite the destruction that is ever present there. Knowing this, how anxious we should always be to live on the Lord's side of the line.”
― George Albert Smith

“We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“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.”
― Larry Wall

“I wanted to create comics as soon as a I learned humans were behind them, that they were not natural phenomena like trees and boulders.”
― Art Spiegelman

“You can capture this body of mine,
take away my freedom and enslave me.
You may even have the power to capture my soul
and sentence me to the realm of eternal darkness.
But my dreams you cannot touch.
They are my will—the very essence of who I am.
In them I laugh. In them I cry. In them I love.
And in them… I live.
My dreams are untouchable and unceasing.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Eena, The Dawn and Rescue

“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 protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes".

And this bugs me; because if authors can stretch their imaginations far enough to envisage the presence of modern-minded men in the fake Middle Ages, then why can't they stretch them that little bit further to put in modern-minded women, or modern-minded social values? It strikes me as being extremely convenient that the one universally permitted exception to this species of "authenticity" is one that makes the male heroes look noble while still mandating that the women be downtrodden and in need of rescuing.

-Comment at Staffer's Book Review 4/18/2012 to "Michael J. Sullivan on Character Agency ”
― Foz Meadows

“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 earn what they received. They got ‘something for nothing,’ and they will neither appreciate the gift nor the giver of the gift.”
― Howard W. Hunter, The teachings of Howard W. Hunter, fourteenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

“Once, she had been her parents' daughter. Then great, unlucky Ias's wife. Her children's mother. At the last, her mother's keeper. Well, I am none of these things now. Who am I, when I am not surrounded by the walls of my life?”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls

“I used to be unusable because I was a mess," Tennal said. "Now I've spent time as a ranker and time as an officer, and you know what? Now I'm unusable by choice.”
― Everina Maxwell, Ocean's Echo

“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)”
― Shaun F. Messick

“But there is a critical point about differences between individuals that exerts arguably more influence on worker productivity than any other. The factor is locus of control, a fancy name for how people view their autonomy and agency in the world. People with an internal locus of control believe that they are responsible for (or at least can influence) their own fates and life outcomes. They may or may not feel they are leaders, but they feel that they are essentially in charge of their lives. Those with an external locus of control see themselves as relatively powerless pawns in some game played by others; they believe that other people, environmental forces, the weather, malevolent gods, the alignment of celestial bodies-- basically any and all external events-- exert the most influence on their lives.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

“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.”
― John A. Widtsoe, Rational Theology

“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 Mission)”
― Shaun F. Messick

“I ran upstairs, loving, weeping. I will run downstairs, unloving, not weeping.”
― Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She Devil

“If they wanted to act like frogs were some kind of top secret male responsibility, she would simply start her own frog operation.”
― Belinda Kelderhouse, Ashes: A Collection of Original Short Stories

“The first time I stole something, it wasn’t planned.”
― Belinda Kelderhouse, Avon Brook Hotel | Volume One: A collection of stories set in the 1970s

“I picked it up, stared at it, and thought: Why am I the one bending and lifting while he sits downstairs complaining about his coffee? So I put the sock in my uniform pocket.”
― Belinda Kelderhouse, Avon Brook Hotel | Complete Edition: A collection of short stories set in the 1970s

“AI is not simply a tool to be used; it is a mirror, a challenge, and a catalyst.”
― Mehrdad Mahmoudi, The Algorithmic Panorama: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry into Artificial Intelligence, Agency, and the Human Future

“If/Then: The Dagger Parable
by Stewart Stafford

I handed her the dagger solemnly,
She took it with a wounded look,
Behind my back, the silence grew—
Newborn blind. Last request.

If the knifepoint breached my spine—
betrayal’s coppery taste was real,
If she stood before me in defence
the shallow shore of safety stayed.

No blow or human shield appeared.
I turned and caught her sobs:
“You have entrusted me with this,
it shall be here when you need it.”

© 2026 Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“If you see an animal in a zoo, you are in control. You can come, and you can go. The animal cannot. She is at your mercy, and at the mercy of those like you. The animal is on display for you.
In the wild, the creature is there for her own purposes. She is not under your control. She can come, and she can go. So can you. Neither of you is on display, and both of you can display as much of yourselves to the other as you wish. It is a meeting of equals.”
― Derrick Jensen, Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos

“Fear is telling you this matters. Listen to it. Then decide whether it gets to choose for you.” — Tophelia”
― Diane Bay, The Bulwark Moon - Return of the Queen

“But we’re finding it hard to commit to the real. Chatbots are appealing not only because of what they promise, but also because of what we’ve allowed to fall into disrepair — our care for each other and our commitment to our communities. All this neglect is part of our state of emergency. So, it won’t be enough to keep the programs in line. We need to address our withdrawal from each. The mission of Community Memory was to use the virtual to improve the quality of life in the real. What if that ambition resurfaced today? What if TikTok, with its viral dance crazes, began investing in real spaces—dance studios, school orchestras, community centers? Teenagers would learn dance moves on the app, and then be directed to join a neighborhood center where they would be performing with others. In this environment, Facebook and Instagram might fund public spaces that would make it easy for people with similar interests to get together in person. Technology would be part of a virtuous circle: As platforms offered ways to connect with neighbors, people would have more reason to invest in neighborhoods. We would be more attuned to what only the real can offer: our connection with nature, with our bodies, with the subtle changes of expression on human faces. Once we reclaimed practices of the real, we’d be in a better position to keep chatbots in their lane, because we’d be passionate about defending our own. We are so far away from this that it may feel fantastical, but it is our challenge. To make it seem less remote, we need workable first steps. We can begin by protecting our children. For them, the potential damage of chatbot friends is existential. The trouble doesn’t begin when a chatbot says something explicitly harmful to a child; it begins the moment a child starts to talk to a chatbot. Children don’t come into the world with empathy, the ability to relate, or an organized internal world. They are developing those things. As they work on this, children learn from what’s around them. Dialogue with an AI can’t offer the basic things we learn from friendship—that joy and anger and envy and generosity are all mixed together, and to successfully navigate life, you have to swim in those waters. AI doesn’t swim in those waters.”
― Sherry Turkle, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines

“Agency is not something we’re born with. It’s a stance toward life that grows with practice and reinforcement. Children and adolescents try and fail. Parents take this as normal and simply say, “Keep at it.” Now we’re offered a way to get things done without ever having to try. Every delegation to a chatbot is a step away from initiative and ownership.”
― Sherry Turkle, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines