It is good advice to slow down a little, steady the course, and focus on the essentials when experiencing adverse conditions.
You have agency, and you are free to choose. But there is actually no free agency. Agency has its price. You have to pay the consequences of your choices.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the concept of agency in making choices while acknowledging that every choice has consequences.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf's quote reflects the philosophical idea that while individuals possess the freedom to make choices—referred to as agency—this freedom comes with inherent responsibilities and consequences. It suggests that every decision we make is not without its price, highlighting the significant impact and weight of our choices in life. Ultimately, embracing our agency means acknowledging the outcomes that follow our actions, reinforcing the idea that freedom is intertwined with responsibility.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared during a discussion about personal decision-making at a workshop.
More from Dieter F. Uchtdorf
All quotes →Absolute truth is not dependent upon public opinion or popularity. Now what is this truth? It is His gospel. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We have a choice. We can seek for the bad in others. Or we can make peace and work to extend to others the understanding, fairness, and forgiveness we so desperately desire for ourselves. It is our choice; for whatever we seek, that we will certainly find.
There are few things that have filled me with such breathless awe as flying in the black of night across oceans and continents and looking out my cockpit window upon the infinite glory of millions of stars.
No, God does not need us to love Him. But oh, how we need to love God! For what we love determines what we seek. What we seek determines what we think and do. What we think and do determines who we are - and who we will become.
Heavenly Father is constantly raining blessings upon us, but it is our fear, doubt, and sin that, like an umbrella, block these blessings from reaching us.
Similar quotes
Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.
A religion is a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong--and you are strong. The great trouble with religion--any religion--is that the religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge these propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason--but one cannot have both.
The man who said 'I'd rather be lucky than good' saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't and you lose.
If there is no other world and there is no fruit and ripening of actions well done or ill done, then here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction, and anxiety, and I shall live happily.
Indeed it is the protean ability of Western civilization to be self-critical and self-correcting - not only in producing wealth but over the whole range of human activities - that constitutes its most decisive superiority over any of its rivals.
You ought not attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you attempt to cure the body without the soul.