Quotes About Agency

The Creator is that which activates a potentially unlimited set of modes in which finite agency is exercised, but is also simply what eternally is.

It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.

If feminism was reduced to one word, it would be this: No. "No" is a boundary, spoken only by a self who claims one. Objects have neither; subjects begin at "No". Feminists said "No" and we meant it.

My survival is not my body, Amas-Garao. My survival is my freedom. I do what I will, because I will it.

The free being is only that which makes itself free.

According to this theory, man is like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged.

No man can rob us of our free will.

According to this theory, man is like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged. In the same way, humans are responsible for their choices and actions, even though these have been anticipated by the logos and form part of its plan.

Meditations 9.40. "But those are things the gods left up to me," protests one voice, to which another responds, "And what makes you think the gods don't care about what's up to us?

If it's in your control, why do you do it? If it's in someone else's control, then who are you blaming? Atoms? The gods? Stupid either way. Blame no one.

Then it became a biological metaphor in the birth stories: Jesus as Son of God was conceived by the Spirit of God, not by a human father. Ultimately, it became a metaphysical or ontological claim: Jesus as the only begotten Son of God is of one substance with God. But initially, to see Jesus as the Son of God points to a relationship of special intimacy and agency.

Rather, the language of divine agency here emphasizes the theme of God's grace: God provided the sacrifice.

You refuse to own yourself, you permit others to do it for you

I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.

I walk away from him. It's enormously pleasing to me, this walking away. It's like being able to make people appear and vanish, at will.

I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.

I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for. There wasn't a lot of choice, but there was some, and this is what I chose.

women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society of dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

the best and most cost-effective way to control women for reproductive and other purposes was through women themselves.

In this connection a few comments upon the crack female control agency known as the Aunts is perhaps in order. Judd—according to the Limpkin material—was of the opinion from the outset that the best and most cost-effective way to control women for reproductive and other purposes was through women themselves.

Right now I still have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn't that freedom of a sort?

I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely.

All that festers is not gold, but it can be made profitable in non-monetary ways: knowledge is power, especially discreditable knowledge. I am not the first person to have recognized this, or to have capitalized on it when possible: every intelligence agency in the world has always known it.

Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman.