Raylan Givens Quotes

If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole. ~ Raylan Givens Justified

I want you to understand," Raylan said, "I don't pull my sidearm 'less I'm gonna shoot to kill. That's its purpose, huh, to kill. So it's how I use it. ~ Elmore Leonard

Boyd looked at him now like he was trying to decide something in his mind.
"You'd shoot me, you get the chance?"
"You make me pull," Raylan said, "I'll put you down. ~ Elmore Leonard

Make choices-not excuses. ~ Charles J. Givens

our present relationships are both the laboratory in which we labor to perfect ourselves and the source of that enjoyment that will constitute our true heaven. ~ Terryl L. Givens

disciples might do well to avoid the bibliolatry that characterizes scripture as unerring truth. Parley Pratt made this point himself in The Fountain of Knowledge, a small pamphlet he wrote in 1844. With elegant metaphor, he noted that scripture resulted from revelatory process and was thus the product of revealed truth, not the other way around. We do well to look to a stream for nourishing water, but we do better to secure the fountain. That fountain, Pratt noted, is "the gift of revelation," which "the restoration of all things" heralds.21 Or, in George MacDonald's metaphor, we should hold the scriptures as "the moon of our darkness, . . . not dear as the sun towards which we haste. ~ Terryl L. Givens

Our minds are driven to answer questions that far transcend the bounds of our own lives. ~ Terryl L. Givens

He called out to no one in particular, Fire in the Hole! ~ Elmore Leonard

The Atonement is not a backup plan in case we happen to fall short in the process; it is the ordained means whereby we gradually become complete and whole, in a sin-strewn process of sanctification through which our Father patiently guides us. ~ Terryl L. Givens

Of Sir Isaac Newton's momentous decipherment of the laws of the universe, the French scientist Pierre-Simon de Laplace famously told Napoleon, in his philosophical euphoria, that he no longer had need of God to make sense of creation. Secular science could henceforth exile God from his universe. In Joseph Smith's conception, by contrast, naturalism and God co-exist. ~ Terryl L. Givens

If you want to learn about money, learn from somebody who has a lot of it. ~ Charles J. Givens

As the brain and body were shaped by natural selection, consumer goods adapted to the mind through a parallel process of product selection, which has rendered them ever more fluent, expressive, and fascinating to our senses. ~ David B. Givens

We decide ourselves whether to do right or wrong, whether to be good or evil. For some, it is fear that keeps them within the law, but for others it is a greater sense of good. I do not think any religion can make a person good, or protect a good person from bad happening to him. ~ Kathleen Givens

Thinking back on the outing to the theatre, she added, 'I want a man, not a preening peacock! ~ Katherine Givens

A supreme deity would no more gift us with intellect and expect us to forsake it in moments of bafflement, than He would fashion us eyes to see and bid us shut them to the stars ~ Terryl L. Givens

A God without body or parts is conceivable. But a God without passions would engender in our hearts neither love nor interest. ~ Terryl Givens

Heaven is not a club we enter. Heaven is a state we attain, in accordance with our "capacity to receive" a blessed and sanctified nature. ~ Terryl L. Givens

The gospel Christ taught was spectacularly designed to unsettle and disturb, not lull into pleasant serenity. ~ Terryl L. Givens

Doing more of what doesn't work won't make it work any better. ~ Charles J. Givens

Time is simply the measurement of human progression against that of existence. ~ Gerald M. Givens

What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. ~ Terryl L. Givens

The call to faith, in this light, is not some test of a coy god, waiting to see if we "get it right." It is the only summons, issued under the only conditions, which can allow us fully to reveal who we are, what we most love, and what we most devoutly desire. Without constraint, without any form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible projection of what resides in our hearts ... The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is, and knowing that a thing is not. ~ Terryl L. Givens

Emotion is not a defect in an otherwise perfect reasoning machine. Reason, unfettered from human feeling, has led to as many horrors as any crusader's zeal. What use is pity in a world devoted to maximizing efficiency and productivity? Scientific husbandry tells us to weed out the sick, the infirm, the weak. The ruthless efficiency of euthanasia initiatives and ethnic cleansing are but the programmatic application of Nietzsche's point: from any quantifiable cost-benefit analysis, the principles of animal husbandry should apply to the human race. Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that strict obedience to "hard reason" rather than sympathy for fellow humans would represent a sacrifice of "the noblest part of our nature."6 It is the human heart resonating with empathy, not the logical brain attuned to the mathematics of efficiency, that revolts at cruelty and inhumanity. In ~ Terryl L. Givens

As surely as the dark gives meaning to the dawn, so does pain give meaning to pleasure, and sorrow to joy. All that we love, all that we strive for, all that we relish, we know only by contrast. ~ Terryl Givens

1. We crave meaty taste because the amphibian brain's hunger for flesh is older than the primate brain's "acquired taste" for fruits and nuts. 2. As it influenced the pursuit, handling, and killing of game, the amygdala also stimulated the release of digestive juices in preparation for eating the kill. Thus, today, hidden aggressiveness in the meat-eater's code makes a sizzling steak more exciting than a bowl of fruit. This explains, in part, why (when possible and affordable) meals throughout the world are planned around a meat dish. ~ David B. Givens

Is faith the beginning of a quest, or the end? Do "religious people" start out from a posture of belief and interpret the world through that lens, or do they weigh the evidence, and come around to God by way of conclusion? We must recognize at the onset that both militant atheism and fervent theism are the same in this regard: they are both just as likely to serve as a dogmatic point of departure, as they are to be a thoughtful and considered end point in one's journey toward understanding. ~ Terryl L. Givens

Our lives are more like a canvas on which we paint, than a script we need to learn – though the illusion of the latter appeals to us by its lower risk. ~ Fiona Givens

We all exhibit our faith commitments by the way we live, and those commitments are oriented around a value or set of values, a belief or set of beliefs, by which we guide our lives. We may posit reason as the highest good. Or pleasure. Or love and kindness. But no foundation is without an act of faith to sustain it. ~ Terryl L. Givens

In acting class, teachers talk about how the 'givens' of a situation help define a character. ~ Hill Harper

I was hit for the first time before I was married. ~ Robin Givens

In the vision of Enoch, we find ourselves drawn to a God who prevents all the pain He can, assumes all the suffering He can, and weeps over the misery He can neither prevent nor assume. ~ Terryl L. Givens

In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not in separate orchards. Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other. If God, like us, is susceptible to immense pain, He is, like us, the greater in His capacity for happiness. The presence of such pain serves the larger purpose of God's master plan, which is to maximize the capacity for joy, or in other words, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." He can no more foster those ends in the absence of suffering and evil than one could find the traction to run or the breath to sing in the vacuum of space. God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into His purposes. "God's power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy. ~ Terryl L. Givens

The strength was always in you. All you had to do was find it. ~ Katherine Givens