Time & Perspective Quote by Richard G. Scott

Scott’s line is a gentle rebuke disguised as calm advice: your worst decisions rarely arrive wearing a warning label. They show up as “just this once,” as a purchase, a fling, a shortcut, a grudge nursed for one more day. By insisting on “the long view,” he’s not merely recommending patience; he’s asserting a moral hierarchy in which tomorrow’s character outranks today’s appetite.

The construction matters. “Most want” versus “think you want” sets up a distinction between core desire and manufactured craving. It’s a cleric’s way of saying: your impulses are loud, but they’re not always you. The subtext is deeply pastoral: people in crisis don’t need new information, they need a different time horizon. Stretch the timeline and temptation shrinks; stretch it further and regret becomes predictable. Scott’s rhetorical move is to make the future feel like a stakeholder in the present, an entity you owe something to.

Context sharpens the intent. As a Latter-day Saint leader (a tradition steeped in eternal perspective, covenant, and deferred gratification), Scott is speaking into a culture that treats self-control as spiritual practice, not mere self-help. The quote also carries an implicit critique of modern immediacy: the market trains us to confuse desire with destiny. Scott’s counsel is countercultural because it frames freedom not as getting what you want quickly, but as refusing to let the “now” auction off the life you meant to build.