“Latter-day Saints are not obedient because they are compelled to be obedient. They are obedient because they know certain spiritual truths and have decided, as an expression of their own individual agency, to obey the commandments of God. . . .”

I think there’s something strange about writing a script I’ve written many, many scripts – dozens and dozens of scripts – and every time I start one, I think to myself: ‘why in the world do I think I know how to do this?’

The first gift that Adam and Eve received was agency: ‘Thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee’ (Moses 3:17).

The scriptures speak of ‘the shield of faith wherewith,’ the Lord said, ‘ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked’ (D&C 27:17).

Happiness will depend on what each of us does with what each has, what we learn from what we do, and what we do thereafter.

Mature love has a bliss not even imagined by newlyweds.

Whenever and however you give birth, your experience will impact your emotions, your mind, your body, and your spirit for the rest of your life.

She can kill with her smile, she can wound with her eyes.

Thoughts, like water, will stay on course if we make a place for them to go. As you learn to control your thoughts, you can gain courage, conquer fear and have a happy life.

Your biggest opponent isn’t the other guy. It’s human nature.

Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes

The Spirit is a voice that one feels more than hears.

Like most things of great worth, knowledge which is of eternal value comes only through personal prayer and pondering.

We will never forget the passengers of Flight 93, who courageously confronted the terrorists, defeating another planned attack on America. They are the heroes for our times.

Tolerance is a virtue, but, like all virtues, when exaggerated it transforms itself into a vice.

I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them.

Repentance is the key with which we can unlock the prison from inside. We hold that key within our hands, and agency is ours to use it.

All autonomous agencies and authorities, sooner or later, turn into self-perpetuating strongholds of conventional thought and practice.

Every discipline develops standards of professional competence to which its workers are subject… Every scientific community is a society in the small, so to speak, with its own agencies of social control.

We are all mediums for our own basic truths. All we really have in life is the primal force that moves us through our days – our unvarnished, untutored, ever-present, inborn agency.

We need to encourage designers and agencies to be responsible. We need to make sure everyone is sensitive to the issues. But to calculate the girls’ body mass – I personally think it is demeaning.

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

I think that what one can see from a Darwinian account is how the addition of culture in our species turns us into a very special sort of animal, an animal that can be a moral agent in a way that no other animal can be.

Let me clarify it through the national news agency that I am not joining Aam Aadmi Party. There has been reports that I will be officially joining AAP, but I can assure you that nothing of that sort is happening.

An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.