50 Agency Quotes to Help You Gain Confidence

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published May 8, 2023

Agency quotes can be a powerful tool to help you strengthen your confidence and willpower.

If you are looking for motivational and inspiring quotes, just look at the list provided below.

Here, we have curated a compilation of the best agency quotes and sayings.

Apart from the quotes section, we have also defined the term agency and its relevant aspects.

So, without any further delay, let’s start our article!

What is meant by the term Agency?

The term agency refers to the ability of a person to make choices independently.

This is an exhibition of one’s capacity to exercise autonomy and self-determination.

It also allows individuals to make decisions regarding their lives.

Thus, the decisions align with a person’s beliefs, values, and desires.

In other words, the agency serves as a tool to take control of one’s life.

The agency is also known as an essential aspect of human development.

It enables us to take responsibility for our actions.

Consequently, it helps us to contribute positively to society.

People having strong agency are likely to pursue their goals.

Agency and Goals

No doubt, setting one’s goals is the key factor that relates to exercising agency.

With a clear sense of direction and purpose, individuals can perform a lot better.

They can take action and make decisions that bring them close to their goals.

If you have a goal in mind, it can offer you the desired motivation to overcome obstacles.

Hence, you can exercise your agency much better by setting your goals.

Collective Agency

Apart from the personal agency, another type of agency is referred to as the “Collective Agency.”

This is a type of agency that helps individuals to implement their collective agency.

As a result, they can achieve their common goals within the scheduled time.

The collective agency includes the gathering of people who think alike.

Here are a few of the most common examples of collective agency:

Political organizations
Social activists
Labor unions
Community organizations
Corporate groups
Scientific groups

How to Exercise Agency

There are numerous ways to exercise one’s agency.

One of the most prominent methods is advocating for one’s interests and needs.

It involves powerfully communicating one’s preferences and choices.

Individuals can successfully exercise their agency and autonomy by advocating their interests and needs.

This allows such a person to make decisions that don’t coincide with his/her values or desires.

Top 10 Agency Quotes

Here are the top 10 best agency quotes by famous people worldwide.

1. “We all exercise agency in the choices we make.” — Gordon B. Hinckley

2. “I’ve got to play free agency out, and I’ve got to look at all of my options.” — Jason Kidd

3. “War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.” — William McKinley

4. “To say that there is patriarchy in Arab culture is not denying women agency.” — Mona Eltahawy

5. “I believe that young kids have agency and can make a difference in the world.” — Peter Paige

6. “As a little kid, you go where your parents drag you. You have no agency, no dominion.” — Richard Linklater

7. “What I notice a lot about millennials is that they have agency over their sexuality.” — Tanya Saracho

8. “Agency is a divine gift to you. You are free to choose what you will be and what you will do.” — Russell M. Nelson

9. “For me, leadership is making a difference. It’s using your agency to bring about change.” — Melanne Verveer

10. “Sounding like I have agency in a song is important to me. I want to feel empowered by the music.” — Kelela

Quotes that Reflect a Lack of Agency

These quotes show the drawbacks of lacking agency.

11. “It’s insanely difficult for people to accept the extent to which we are biological organisms without agency.” — Robert Sapolsky

12. “Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.” — Alexander Hamilton

13. “To be candid with you, free agency hurts all sports. It’s great for athletes making an enormous amount of money. But to say it helps the sports, I don’t believe that.” — Jerry West

14. “There are real-world, devastating consequences for disabled women marginalized by the kinds of attitudes that deny them full agency over what happens to their bodies.” — Stella Young

15. “I was very depressed at a young age and felt like I didn’t have agency towards that. Being ‘female’ meant I couldn’t be that – I couldn’t be angry, loud, or sullen. Being sad meant I was weak.” — Petra Collins

16. “I fear that too many have sadly surrendered their agency to the adversary and are saying by their conduct, ‘I care more about satisfying my own desires than I do about bearing the Savior’s power to bless others.” — Russell M. Nelson

17. “Obviously, you can stash money under your mattress, and cut down on hazelnut lattes, but in terms of the larger economic frame of our lives, we have very little agency. About one of the only things you can do is understand it.” — John Lanchester

18. “I grew up under the politics of my size and my skin. I grew up under the politics of the sound of my voice and a lack of agency, or a feeling of a lack of agency, and not always being able to find myself in images that were in the media.” — Winston Duke

19. “When you’re directed by social media, I think it’s very easy to lose a sense of agency. And you can see it when you go to any subway station; you walk down any street in a city, you will see 70-80 percent of people staring into their phones as they walk or stand.” — Tim Ferriss

20. “Perhaps looking out through big baby eyes – if we could – would not be as revelatory experience as many imagine. We might see a world inhabited by objects and people, a world infused with causation, agency, and morality – a world that would surprise us not by its freshness but by its familiarity.” — Paul Bloom

Agency Quotes that Showcase the Benefits of Agency

Discover the power of taking control of your life with these quotes highlighting the positive impact of agency and autonomy.

21. “As precious as life itself is our heritage of individual freedom, for man’s free agency is a God-given gift.” — David O. McKay

22. “I’m about women’s empowerment. I’m about agency. I’m about being in control of your narrative and your body.” — Janelle Monae

23. “You are free to choose what you want to make of your life. It’s called free agency or free will, and it’s your birthright.” — Sean Covey

24. “God gave us our agency. He taught us a way. He showed us what to do. But he gave us our agency and left us free to act as we choose to do.” — Gordon B. Hinckley

25. “People are shaped in myriad ways by their upbringing and family. We also have agency in our lives, the people we become, and the lives we lead.” — Chesa Boudin

26. “Women’s empowerment, whether through legal, financial, or cultural routes, will tend to increase their agency and their ability to take part in activism.” — Deeyah Khan

27. “Interviewing someone is a very proactive process and requires taking a lot of agency into your own hands to get past people’s general normal self-preservation mode.” — Brandon Stanton

28. “Power is the agency to effect change, pure and simple. The more power you have, the clearer and less frictional the trajectory from an idea in your mind to its birth in real life.” — Caroline Ghosn

29. “Free agency, given us through the plan of our Father, is the great alternative to Satan’0s plan of force. With this sublime gift, we can grow, improve, progress, and seek perfection.” — James E. Faust

30. “If the agency of the mother in forming the character of her children is, in truth, so considerable, as I think it – if she does so much toward making her son what she would wish him to be – how essential is it that she should be fitted for the beneficial performance of these important duties.” — John Marshall

Realistic Agency Quotes

Reality-based agency quotes are listed below that describe various realities related to agency.

31. “Women often find great roles in revolution, simply because the rules fall apart and everyone has agency, anyone can act.” — Rebecca Solnit

32. “The divine law indeed has excluded women from this ministry, but they endeavor to thrust themselves into it; and since they can effect nothing of themselves, they do all through the agency of others.” — John Chrysostom

33. “One lesson of the vote for Brexit was that citizens were fed up being treated as bystanders. One of the gains of Leave was the flourishing of a sense of agency and self-determination that it afforded to many.” — Claire Fox

34. “The animal world seizes its food in masses little and big and often gorges itself with it, but the vegetable, through the agency of the solvent power of water, absorbs its nourishment molecule by molecule.” — John Burroughs

35. “Dealing with actors is incredibly complex because they oftentimes are like pieces of clay. They want to be told how you want it done. You have to decide then if you want to be the teller or if you want to give them agency.” — Rashid Johnson

36. “With ‘Black Panther,’ black artists were provided with the opportunity and agency to create art that captures the full range of their imaginative possibilities. It matters that Chadwick Boseman is the protagonist and is supported by a cast of nearly all black characters.” — Clint Smith

37. “It’s my view that gender is culturally formed, but it’s also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms, especially against those who are gender different, who are nonconforming in their gender presentation.” — Judith Butler

38. “Universities should be about more than developing work skills. They must also be about producing civic-minded and critically engaged citizens – citizens who can engage in debate, dialogue and bear witness to a different and critical sense of remembering, agency, ethics, and collective resistance.” — Henry Giroux

39. “If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

40. “The question I’m always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask.” — Salman Rushdie

Moral-Based Agency Quotes

The below quotes emphasize moral agency benefits and are essential.

41. “If we grant immigrants moral agency, we assume that they are capable of abiding by the law and that they are legally responsible when they do not.” — Heather Mac Donald

42. “We are accountable for our actions as we exercise our moral agency. If we understand this principle and make righteous choices, our lives will be blessed.” — L. Lionel Kendrick

43. “When I study and ponder moral agency and its eternal consequences, I realize that we are truly spirit children of God and therefore should act accordingly.” — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

44. “Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated.” — Tom G. Palmer

45. “Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label ‘inspiration’.” — Norman Lindsay

46. “There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter.” — Alfred Russel Wallace

47. “This great question of predestination and free will, of free moral agency and accountability, and being saved by the grace of God, and damned for the glory of God, have occupied the mind of what we call the civilized world for many centuries.” — Robert Green Ingersoll

48. “First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don’t get much airtime in day-to-day life. What’s the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we’re at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?” — Kathryn Schulz

49. “Worldly influences would hinder the use of our agency afforded through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But we are agents who can act, and that affects everything in terms of how we live the gospel in our daily lives. It affects how we pray, how we study the scriptures, how we worship at church.” — David A. Bednar

50. “More-radical scholars insist that an inherent clash exists between science and our long-held conceptions about consciousness and moral agency: if you accept that our brains are a myriad of smaller components, you must reject such notions as a character, praise, blame, and free will.” — Paul Bloom