Maxims, Axioms, and Principles - 01

Maxims
Axioms
Principles

Principle 1
Freedom to choose
Act, not to be acted upon
Proactive, not reactive
Free agency

The most important principle to understand is that of 'Free agency'. You are free to do anything you wish. Notice that you cannot choose the consequences of your actions, good or bad. No one can force you to do anything. Even with a gun held to your head, you still have the freedom to choose. This is the core principle that must be accepted or all other principles have no bearing. With the freedom to choose, you also accept responsibility for your own thoughts, words, deeds and situations. You are where you are because of choices you have made. If you are not satisfied with who or where you are then YOU must make the change. First by acknowledging your own responsibility in getting you there, and then choosing to make the necessary decisions to get out. Once you have accepted this, you forfeit the right to play victim. You are now the master of your own destiny.

Quotes:
The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose.
J. Martin Kohe

You can choose to be happy or sad and whichever you chose, that is what you get. No one is really responsible to make someone else happy, no matter what most people have been taught and accept as true.
Sidney Madwed

This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.
Susan Polis Schutz

In all things there are three choices: Yes, No & no choice, except in this -- I either choose the truth or I am deceit.
Sovereign

The forces of good and evil are working within and around me, I must choose, and in a free will universe I do have a choice.
Sovereign

If you choose not to decide -- you still have made a choice!
Neil Peart

Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.
Anonymous

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873), On Liberty, 1859

One of the joys we have in being human is in exercising our freedom to choose and to take each case as it comes to us. We are not robots who are forced into behaviors by their programming. We see things; we think about things; and we choose our course of action or beliefs appropriately. And as long as that remains true of us, we will live every day of our lives on one slippery slope or another. There is no reason to fear this.
Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher weblog, 03-23-06

You must learn to face the fact, always, that you choose to do what you do, and that everything you do affects not only you but others.
Holly Lisle, Fire In The Mist, 1992

His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
Lois McMaster Bujold, "Memory", 1996

I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I choose…though not always what I pleased.
Lois McMaster Bujold, "Memory", 1996

Agency is an eternal law. In order for us to use our agency, we must have a knowledge of good and evil, we must have the freedom to make choices, and after we have exercised our agency, there must be consequences that follow our choices.
Wolfgang H. Paul, 2006

We are responsible to use our agency in a world of choices. It will not do to pretend that our agency has been taken away when we are not free to exercise it without unwelcome consequences.
Dallin H. Oaks, 2001

You have to have agency to choose between good and evil. So we say, “I understand I’m free to do what I want. I’m my own person. I have agency.” It’s true that we are free to make our own choices, but we’re not free to choose the consequences of those choices. Once you understand that, you begin to understand that there is a great price to be paid for agency. Those people who think agency means “I can do whatever I want whenever I want” do not understand. They may be able to do what they want, but they can’t choose the consequences.
Robert D. Hales, 2005