DAVID O. MCKAY

9th President of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
April 9, 1951 – January 18, 1970

Second Counselor in the First Presidency (October 11, 1934 – April 4, 1951)
President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (August 8, 1950 – April 9, 1951)
Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (April 9, 1906 – October 11, 1934)

General Conference Addresses

  • October 1969 General Conference
    • Man…the Jewel of God
      • “The Church urges men to have self-mastery to control their appetites, their tempers, and their speech. A man is not at his best when he is a slave to some habit. A man is not his best who lives merely to gratify his passions. That is one reason why the Lord has given the Church the revelation of the Word of Wisdom so that, even from boyhood and girlhood, young men and young women may learn to control themselves. That is not always easy.”
      • “Live honest, sincere lives! Be honest with yourselves, honest with your brethren, honest with your families, honest with those with whom you deal—always honest. The very foundation of all character rests upon the principles of honesty and sincerity.”
    • To Be in the Service of Our Fellowmen Is to Be in the Service of Our God
      • “There is no teaching of morality without personality, and the best means of preaching the gospel is by your personal contact. Personal contact is what will influence those investigators. That personal contact—the nature of it, its effect—depends upon you. That is the thing I wish to emphasize. Each one should remember that somewhere there is an honest soul waiting to hear the truth, and it may be that you are the only one who can reach that inquiring soul.”
      • “This means that every man is a Christian gentleman; that he has integrity, is honest and trustworthy; that every husband is true to the ideals of chastity; that every young man refrains from indulgence in tobacco, in strong drink or drugs, and keeps himself free from the sins of the world; that every man is worthy to represent our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!”
      • “When one senses the glory of the gospel, when one realizes how comprehensive it is and what a great guide it is to a true philosophy of living, he senses his own need for help and guidance. That is the fourth help in the performance of missionary work—guidance through prayer!”
    • In the Church, Man Does Not Live for Himself Alone
      • “That is one great truth to which testimony has been borne in this conference—that man is spirit, the son of his Father, and has within him that which will cause him to yearn and to aspire to become dignified as a son of God should be dignified. The dignity of man, not the degradation of man, has been emphasized throughout this conference.”
      • “I received a visit in my apartment just a year ago from one of our own eminent scientists—Philo T. Farnsworth—who testified to me that he knows that he was directed by a higher source in gaining his scientific knowledge, and that he knows that God lives.”
  • April 1969 General Conference
    • Structure of the Home Threatened by Irresponsibility and Divorce
      • “Today, when these facts are so strikingly manifest, let all sincere men recognize the evil conditions that have caused wars, and resolve with God’s help to banish them forever. There must come a victory of right and freedom over iniquity and oppression; I repeat, war will never be vanquished until men change their hearts and establish new ideals.”
      • “Degenerating forces in the world are rampant, but they can be resisted if youth will cherish right thoughts and aspire to high ideals. The age-old conflict between truth and error is being waged with accelerating fury, and at the present hour error seems to be gaining the upper hand. Increasing moral turpitude and widespread disregard for the principles of honor and integrity are undermining influences in social, political, and business life.”
    • Let Virtue Garnish Thy Thoughts
      • “To the men of the priesthood I give this caution. Your weakest point will be the point at which Satan tries to tempt you, and will try to win you, and if you have made it weak yourself before you have undertaken to serve the Lord, he will add to that weakness. Resist him and you will gain in strength. He will tempt you in another point.”
      • “Now, I mention this because there are too many broken hearts in our Church because men, some of whom hold the priesthood and prominent positions, are tempted right where they are weak. They forget that they have made covenants with the Lord, and step aside from the path of virtue and discretion, and will break their wives’ hearts because of foolish indulgence and because of their yielding.”
      • “May God add his blessings to the instructions and reports that will be given this night; may we depart with greater determination in our hearts to serve the Lord and keep his commandments; may we go forth with greater resolution to defend one another in righteous living, to defend the Church, not to speak against our neighbors, nor against authorities of the Church, local, stake, or general. Let us avoid evil speaking; let us avoid slander and gossip. These are poisons to the soul to those who indulge. Evil speaking injures the reviler more than the reviled.”
      • “The Melchizedek Priesthood course of study for the coming year will include in the lesson material such subjects as liberty and freedom, religion and the state, the dangers of Communism, and other subjects considered of vital importance in the study of the profound truths of the gospel.”
      • “The study of these lessons will enable the brethren of the priesthood to become better acquainted with forces that are opposed to righteousness, as well as with the Lord’s plan of salvation for all his children.”
      • “God is guiding this church. Be true to it; be loyal to it. Be true to your families, loyal to them. Protect your children. Guide them, not arbitrarily, but through the kind example of a father, and so contribute to the strength of the Church by exercising your priesthood in your home and in your lives.”
    • The Times Call for Courageous Youth and True Manhood
      • “As it is true of the individual, so it is true of the home. Our homes radiate what we are, and that radiation comes from what we say and how we act in the home. No member of this Church, no husband or father, has the right to utter an oath in his home, or ever to express a cross word to his wife or to his children. By your ordination and your responsibility, you cannot do it as a man who holds the priesthood and be true to the spirit within you. You contribute to an ideal home by your character, controlling your passion, your temper, guarding your speech, because those things will make your home what it is, and what it will radiate to the neighborhood. You do what you can to produce peace and harmony, no matter what you may suffer.”
  • October 1968 General Conference
    • A Citizen Who Loves Justice and Hates Evil Is Better and Stronger Than a Battleship
      • “We cannot, we must not, be insensible to the evil forces around us, and especially the communistic conspiracy, the avowed object of which is to destroy faith in God, to sow discord and contention among men with the view of undermining, weakening, if not entirely destroying, our constitutional form of government, and to weaken and subvert the ideals of our younger generation. When acts and schemes are manifestly contrary to the revealed word of the Lord, I feel, as do my associates, justified in warning our people against them.”
      • “A clean man is a national asset. A pure woman is the incarnation of true national glory. A citizen who loves justice and hates evil is better and stronger than a battleship. The strength of any community consists of and exists in the men who are pure, clean, upright, and straightforward, ready for the right, and sensitive to every approach of evil. Let such ideals be the standard of citizenship.”
    • Priesthood Holders to Be Examples in Daily Life As Representatives of the Most High
      • “I am going to tell you boys of the Aaronic Priesthood that a voice has been heard in this dispensation giving assurance that the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the head of this Church and guiding it, as he directed it in ancient days and has guided it since he and his Father appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith.”
      • “I am going to tell you what happened to me as a boy upon the hillside near my home in Huntsville. I was yearning, just as you boys are yearning, to know that the vision given to the Prophet Joseph Smith was true, and that this Church was really founded by revelation, as he claimed. I thought that the only way a person could get to know the truth was by having a revelation or experiencing some miraculous event, just as came to the Prophet Joseph.”
      • “One day I was hunting cattle. While climbing a steep hill, I stopped to let my horse rest, and there, once again, an intense desire came over me to receive a manifestation of the truth of the restored gospel. I dismounted, threw my reins over my horse’s head, and there, under a serviceberry bush, I prayed that God would declare to me the truth of his revelation to Joseph Smith. I am sure that I prayed fervently and sincerely and with as much faith as a young boy could muster.”
      • “At the conclusion of the prayer, I arose from my knees, threw the reins over my faithful pony’s head, and got into the saddle. As I started along the trail again, I remember saying to myself: “No spiritual manifestation has come to me. If I am true to myself, I must say I am just the same ‘old boy’ that I was before I prayed.” I prayed again when I crossed Spring Creek, near Huntsville, in the evening to milk our cows.”
    • Spirituality in Leading and Teaching the Gospel
      • “Fellow workers, you and I cannot hope to exert even to a small degree the personality of our great teacher, Jesus Christ. Each one’s personality may be compared to the Savior’s personality only as one little sunbeam to the mighty sun itself; and yet, though infinitely less in degree, each leader’s, each teacher’s personality should be the same in kind. In the realm of character, each leader and teacher may be superior, and such a magnet as to draw around him or her, in an indescribable way, those whom he or she would lead or teach. It is the radiation of the light that attracts.”
      • “However, no matter how attractive the personality may be, that leader or teacher fails in the work assigned if the leader or teacher directs the love of the member only to the personality of the leader or teacher. It is the leader’s duty, or the teacher’s duty, to teach the member to love—not the leader or teacher, but the truth of the gospel. Always, everywhere, we find Christ losing himself for his Father’s will; and so also should our leaders and teachers, so far as their personalities are concerned, lose themselves for the truth he desires to have them teach.”
      • “Let me give you briefly five things, among many others, that may characterize the successful leader or teacher in the Church:”
      • “First: Implicit faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ as the light of the world, and a sincere desire to serve him. This condition of the soul will make for companionship and guidance of the Holy Ghost.”
      • “Second: Unfeigned love for the child, or member. Unfeigned—remember how the word is used by the Prophet Joseph Smith in that great revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants: “by love unfeigned.” Unfeigned love for the children or members, guided by determination to deal justly and impartially with every member of the Church. Honor the child or member, and the child or member will honor you.”
      • “Third: Thorough preparation. The successful leader knows his duties and responsibilities and also the members under his direction. The teacher knows his children, as well as the lessons.”
      • “Fourth: Cheerfulness—not forced but natural cheerfulness, springing spontaneously from a hopeful soul.”
      • “Fifth: Power to act nobly.”
      • “God bless you all in your homes. Husbands, do not be cross when you enter your homes. Let us be kind, courteous. Have the same courtesy in your homes that you have when you are out in society. Thank your wives; thank your children; and say, “If you please,” “Excuse me.” These little things mean so much and make life so much sweeter.”
  • April 1968 General Conference
    • Christ, the Light of Humanity
      • “If we desire to learn the ideal life to lead among our fellowmen, we can find a perfect example in the life of Jesus. Whatsoever our noble desires, our lofty aspirations, our ideals in any phase of life, we can look to Christ and find perfection. So, in seeking a standard for moral manhood, we need only to go to the Man of Nazareth and in him find embodied all virtues that go to make the perfect man.”
      • “The virtues that combined to make this perfect character are truth, justice, wisdom, benevolence, and self-control. His every thought, word, and deed were in harmony with divine law and, therefore, true. The channel of communication between him and the Father was constantly open, so that truth, which rests upon revelation, was always known to him.”
      • “Great as are these virtues I have named, they do not seem so practical and applicable to daily life as the virtue of self-control. It is as impossible to think of moral manhood apart from self-control as to separate sunlight from the day. Self-control means the government and regulation of all our natural appetites, desires, passions, and affections; and there is nothing that gives a man such strength of character as the sense of self-conquest, the realization that he can make his appetites and passions serve him and that he is not a servant to them. This virtue includes temperance, abstinence, bravery, fortitude, hopefulness, sobriety, chastity, independence, tolerance, patience, submission, continence, purity.”
    • Moral and Spiritual Values in Education
      • “Youth need religion to satisfy the innate longing of the soul. Man is a spiritual being, and sometime or another every man is possessed with a longing, an irresistible desire, to know his relationship to the Infinite. He realizes that he is not just a physical object to be tossed for just a short time from bank to bank, only to be submerged finally in the ever-flowing stream of life. There is something within him that urges him to rise above himself, to control his environment, to master the body and all things physical, and to live in a higher and more beautiful world.”
    • Give Concern to the Real Values of Life and Less Time to Those Things That Perish
      • “Brethren and sisters, the gospel is our anchor. We know what it stands for. If we live it and feel it, if we speak well of it, of the priesthood, of our families, of our neighbors, we shall feel happier, and in reality we shall be preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. The responsibility has been given to us to convey the gospel to our fellowmen. Some of us wait until some special opportunity is given to us to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, and yet the duty devolves upon each of us to proclaim that good news every day of our lives. We proclaim it in our acts—in the home, in business, in social circles, in politics; indeed, everywhere that we mingle with men we have the responsibility resting upon us to give the good news to the people of the world.”
      • “Let us guard our thoughts and our tongues. One of the best ways of building up our home, be it a domicile, a city, a state, or a nation, is always to speak well of that home, city, state, or nation. Let the tongue be under control at all times.”
  • October 1967 General Conference
    • Unity of Purpose Important to the Accomplishment of God’s Work
      • “It is the principle of unity that has enabled the wards, stakes, branches, and missions of the Church to progress and to accomplish the purposes for which the Church was established. It could not have been done by dissension and hatred. There have been difficulties. Each member of the Church has his own ideas. Sometimes they are not the same as those of the bishopric, and not the same as those of the presidency of the stake, and not the same as the Presidency of the Church; but each has had to submerge his own ideas to the good of the whole, and in that united purpose we have achieved something that is wonderful.”
      • “Unity of purpose, with all working in harmony, is needed to accomplish God’s work In a revelation given to the Prophet Joseph Smith about one year after the Church was organized, the Lord in a broad sense makes known why his great work, to be accomplished, has been restored for the benefit of mankind and to prepare the way for his second coming.”
      • “The greatest safeguard we have for unity and strength in the Church is found in the priesthood, by honoring and respecting it. Oh, my brethren—presidents of stakes, bishops of wards, and all who hold the priesthood—God bless you in your leadership, in your responsibility to guide, to bless, to comfort the people whom you have been appointed to preside over and to visit. Guide them to go to the Lord and seek inspiration so to live that they may rise above the low and the mean, and live in the spiritual realm.”
      • “Timely references and appropriate warnings have been given from time to time on the danger and evils of war. There is another danger even more menacing than the threat of invasion of a foreign foe of any peace-loving nation. It is the unpatriotic activities and underhanded scheming of disloyal groups and organizations within any nation, bringing disintegration, that are often more dangerous and more fatal than outward opposition.”
    • Priesthood Inherent in God—From Him It Must Emanate
      • “In seeking the source of the priesthood, we can conceive of no condition beyond God himself. In him it centers. From him it must emanate. Priesthood being thus inherent in the Father, it follows that he alone can give it to another. Priesthood, therefore, as held by man, must ever be delegated by authority. There never has been a human being in the world who had the right to arrogate to himself the power and authority of the priesthood. There have been some who would arrogate to themselves that right, but the Lord has never recognized it.”
      • “To hold the priesthood of God by divine authority is one of the greatest gifts that can come to a man, and worthiness is of first importance. The very essence of priesthood is eternal. He is greatly blessed who feels the responsibility of representing Deity. He should feel it to such an extent that he would be conscious of his actions and words under all conditions. No man who holds the Holy Priesthood should treat his wife disrespectfully. No man who holds that priesthood should fail to ask the blessings on his food or to kneel with his wife and children and ask for God’s guidance. A home is transformed because a man holds and honors the priesthood.”
    • Our Responsibility to Contribute to a Better Life
      • “The gospel finds its greatest expression in the individual. It finds expression in the home, as we have heard in this conference. Our homes radiate what we are, and that radiation comes from what we say and how we act in the home. No member of this Church—husband, father, or child—has the right to utter an oath in his home or ever to express a cross word to his wife or to his children or to parents. We contribute to an ideal home by our character, by controlling our passions, our temper, by guarding our speech, because those things will make our homes what they are and what they will radiate to the neighborhood. Anger, hatred, jealousy are but tools of destruction.”
      • “There is no one great thing that we can do to obtain eternal life, and it seems to me that the great lesson to be learned in the world today is to apply in the little acts and duties of life the glorious principles of the gospel. Let us not think that because some of the things we have heard during this conference may seem small and trivial, they are unimportant. Life, after all, is made up of little things. Our life, our being, physically is made up here of little heartbeats. Let that little heart stop beating, and life in this world ceases.”
      • “God bless you men of the priesthood. May you hold it in dignity and righteousness that comes from within, not from without. To hold the priesthood of God by divine authority is one of the greatest gifts that can come to a man. He is greatly blessed who feels the responsibility of representing Deity. He should feel it to such an extent that he is conscious of his actions and words under all conditions.”
  • April 1967 General Conference
    • Glaring Evils of Our Day and a Warning to Youth
      • “It is the duty of parents and of the Church not only to teach but also to demonstrate to young people that living a life of truth and moral purity brings joy and happiness, while violations of moral and social laws result only in dissatisfaction, sorrow, and, when carried to extreme, in degradation.”
      • “We need not shut our eyes to the fact that too many of our young folk respond to the call of the physical, because it seems the easy and natural thing to do. Too many are vainly seeking shortcuts to happiness. It should always be kept in mind that that which is most worthwhile in life requires strenuous effort. When a man seeks something for nothing and shuns effort, he is in no position to resist temptation.”
      • “In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there is but one standard of morality. No young man has any more right to sow his wild oats in youth than has a young girl. He who is unchaste in young manhood is untrue to a trust given to him by the parents of the girl, and she who is unchaste in maidenhood is untrue to her future husband and lays the foundation of unhappiness in the home, suspicion, and discord. Do not worry about these teachers who encourage promiscuity and self-gratification. Just keep in mind this eternal truth, that chastity is a virtue to be prized as one of life’s noblest achievements.”
    • Consciousness of God: Supreme Goal of Life
      • “We are not prepared to meet him if we bring thoughts regarding business affairs, and especially if we come knowing we have been disloyal to our wives and other members of our families, and bring feelings of hatred, enmity, and jealousy toward our fellowman. Most certainly no individual can hope to come into communion with the Father if that individual has such disloyalty or entertains any such feelings, as they are foreign to worship and are particularly out of tune with the partaking of the sacrament.”
    • Making God the Center of Our Lives
      • “Our body will not fulfill its purpose—it cannot—without that life-giving something within which is the offspring of Deity as eternal as the Father. When death comes, his power ends with the silencing of the physical heart. He does not, he cannot touch that eternal part of man any more than he touched Christ’s spirit while his body lay in a borrowed tomb. He himself lived and moved and had his being. It is also true that death cannot touch that spirit within us. That spirit within, young man, young woman, is the real you. What you make of yourself depends upon you as an individual. You are in this world to choose the right or the wrong, to accept the right or yield to temptation. Upon that choice will depend the development of the spiritual part of you. That is fundamental in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
  • October 1966 General Conference
    • A Divine Plan for Finding Security and Peace of Mind
      • “Efforts are being made to deprive man of his free agency, to steal from the individual his liberty; and we must never forget that next to life itself, free agency is the greatest gift of God man.”
    • The Church—a Worldwide Institution
      • “The followers of the Redeemer were reviled, persecuted, and martyred, but they continued to testify to the truth of their risen Lord.”
      • “Three hundred years passed, and Christianity became the dominant religion of the most powerful nation in the world, and the persecuted became the persecutors. Pride and worldliness supplanted humility and faith. The church became corrupt. Doctrines of men supplanted the commandments of God; spiritual darkness enshrouded the nations of the world.”
    • The Will of God
      • “That test is most sound. It is most philosophical. It is the most simple test to give knowledge to an individual of which the human mind can conceive. Doing a thing, introducing it into your very being, will convince you whether it is good or whether it is bad. You may not be able to convince me of that which you know, but you know it because you have lived it. That is the test that the Savior gave to those men when they asked him how they should know whether the doctrine was of God or whether it was of man.”
      • “I sometimes wish men would kneel down and try to pray to electricity or atomic power. Imagine trying to pray to these forces. You cannot do it, and yet they are great and known forces. You can, however, pray to God the Father, a personal being. God reveals to the soul his existence. He reveals the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to make known to us the great reality of the existence of God and his Son; and in that spirit, and with such witness in my soul, I bear testimony today that Jesus Christ is the Redeemer of the world.”
  • April 1966 General Conference
    • The Reality of the Resurrection
      • “The resurrection is a miracle, however, only in the sense that it is beyond man’s comprehension and understanding. To all who accept it as fact, it is but a manifestation of a uniform law of life. Because man does not understand the law, he calls it a miracle.”
      • “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declares to all the world that Christ is the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world! No true follower is satisfied to accept him merely as a great reformer, the ideal teacher, or even as the one perfect man. The Man of Galilee is—not figuratively, but literally—the Son of the living God.”
    • Only One Standard of Morality
      • “Ever since the organization of the Church, its leaders have raised their voices warning that infidelity and sexual immorality are two principal evils that threaten to weaken and to wreck present-day civilization. Unfortunately, the trends of modern life are disintegrating the very foundation of the Christian home. Sexual laxity, intemperance, and crime are its insidious and vicious enemies.”
      • “In the Church there is but one standard of morality. No young man has any more right to sow his wild oats in youth than has a young girl; she is taught that second only to the crime of taking human life is that of losing her virtue, and that should be also the ideal among young men.”
      • “No one can transgress the laws of chastity and find peace. That is the message that we must give as parents and priesthood members to the young men and women and all others throughout the Church. No matter what the opportunity, no matter what the temptation, let the young man know that to find happiness he must hold sacred his true manhood. Let him know that he is going to live, and live completely, by refusing to yield to temptations. Then he is happy. There is peace instead of turbulency in his soul.”
    • Response to Duty
      • “The Lord bless you in your homes, in your church appointments, whether at home or abroad. God bless you, you young men and girls, in living the honorable life your parents would have you live, and God will make you happy by being true to the ideals of virtue and purity and will bring happiness to your parents, happiness to your wards, happiness to the membership of the kingdom of God.”
  • October 1965 General Conference
    • Man’s Free Agency
      • “These two great forces are hate and love. Hate had its origin in our preexistent state. There is a significant reference in the Apocalypse to “a war in heaven.” It is not only significant, but seemingly contradictory, for we think of heaven as a celestial abode of bliss, an impossible condition where war and contention could exist. The passage is significant because it implies a freedom of choice and of action in the spirit world.”
      • “The world does not comprehend the significance of that divine gift to the individual. It is as inherent as intelligence which, we are told, has never been nor can be created.”
      • “In the spirit of hate, as is manifest today in the world, the very existence of God is denied, the free agency of man is taken from him, and the power of the state supplanted. I do not know that there was ever a time in the history of mankind when the Evil One seemed so determined to take from man his freedom.”
      • “A fundamental principle of the gospel is free agency, and references in the scriptures show that this principle is (1) essential to man’s salvation; and (2) may become a measuring rod by which the actions of men, of organizations, of nations may be judged.”
      • “Man’s free agency is an eternal principle of progress, and any form of government that curtails or inhibits its free exercise is wrong. Satan’s plan in the beginning was one of coercion, and it was rejected because he sought to destroy the agency of man which God had given him.”
      • “When man uses this God-given right to encroach upon the rights of another, he commits a wrong. Liberty becomes license, and the man, a transgressor. It is the function of the state to curtail the violator and to protect the individual.”
      • “Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct our lives is God’s greatest gift to man. Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. It is inherent in the spirit of man. It is a divine gift to every normal being. Whether born in abject poverty or shackled at birth by inherited riches, everyone has the most precious of all life’s endowments—the gift of free agency, man’s inherited and inalienable right. It is the impelling source of the soul’s progress. It is the purpose of the Lord that man becomes like him. In order for man to achieve this, it was necessary for the Creator first to make him free. To man is given a special endowment not bestowed upon any other living thing. God gave to him the power of choice.”
      • “With free agency, however, there comes responsibility. If man is to be rewarded for righteousness and punished for evil, then common justice demands that he be given the power of independent action. A knowledge of good and evil is essential to man’s progress on earth. If he were coerced to do right at all times or helplessly enticed to commit sin, he would merit neither a blessing for the first nor punishment for the second. Man’s responsibility is correspondingly operative with his free agency. Actions in harmony with divine law and the laws of nature will bring happiness, and those in opposition to divine truth, misery. Man is responsible not only for every deed, but also for every idle word and thought.”
      • “That man is not at peace who is untrue to the whisperings of Christ—the promptings of his conscience. He cannot be at peace when he is untrue to his better self, when he transgresses the law of righteousness, either in dealing with himself by indulging in passions or appetites, in yielding to the temptations of the flesh, or whether he is untrue to trust in transgressing the law.”
      • “Fundamental in all Christ’s teachings was the crime of wrong thinking. He condemned avarice, enmity, hate, jealousy as vehemently as he did the results that avarice, enmity, and hate produce.”
      • “He who harbors hatred and bitterness injures himself far more than the one towards whom he manifests these evil propensities.”
    • The Right and Authority of the Priesthood
      • “There are two conditions which should always be considered when the priesthood is conferred. The first of these is the individual’s worthiness to receive it. The second is the service which he can render to the Church and to his fellowmen.”
    • Cherish Noble Aspirations
      • “I ask the youth of the Church today, “Whom do you seek?” Would you keep that youth which is yours now? Then love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your heart, and with all your soul and though the body becomes decrepit and like an old house begins to tumble, your spirit will still be young, as young as the little babe that might be in that tumbled-down house, because your body, after all, is but the house in which you live. Even when your heart stops beating, your eyelids close, and you respond no more to your physical environment, that spirit, still young, will go into the presence of him whom you have made your ideal.”
      • “Cherish in your hearts the testimony of truth; make it as solid and as firm and unwavering as the fixed stars in the heavens. May there come into everyone’s heart and into all our homes the true Spirit of Christ, our Redeemer, whose reality, whose inspiring guidance I know to be real. May a kind heaven help us to cherish worthy ideals and noble aspirations. Whatever our joys and sorrows, let us ever remember that what we ardently desire in our hearts will determine what we really are. How constantly and consistently we cherish noble aspirations in our minds and follow them will determine whether we drift as failures along life’s highway or fulfill the divine purpose of our being.”
  • April 1965 General Conference
    • Safeguards Against the Delinquency of Youth
      • “There are three fundamental things to which every child is entitled: (1) a respected name, (2) a sense of security, (3) opportunities for development.”
      • “A clean man is a national asset. A pure woman is the incarnation of true national glory. A citizen who loves justice and hates evil is better than a battleship.”
    • The Evils of Cigarette Smoking
      • “What is the crowning glory of man in this earth so far as his individual achievement is concerned? It is character—character developed through obedience to the laws of life as revealed through Jesus Christ, who came that we might have life and have it more abundantly.”
      • “To our boys I would say that if they want to live physically; if they want to be men strong in body, vigorous in mind; if they want to be good in sports, enter the basketball game, enter the football game, enter the contest in running and jumping; if they want to be good Scouts; if they want to be good citizens, in business, anywhere, avoid tobacco and live strictly the religious life.”
    • The Purpose of Church to Perfect the Individual
      • “The whole purpose of the organization of this great Church, so complete, so perfect, is to bless the individual. How that stands out in striking contrast, in opposition, to the claim of the communist who says that the individual is but a spoke in the wheel of the state, that the state is all in all, the individual being but a contributing factor to the perpetuation and strength of the state.”
      • “Jesus sought for a perfect society by perfecting the individual. He recognized the fallacy in the dream of those who hoped to make a perfect society out of imperfect individuals. In all his labors and associations, he sought the perfection of the individual.”
  • October 1964 General Conference
    • Peace Built Upon the Solid Foundation of Eternal Principles
      • “But let us ever remember that peace and progress are attained only at the price of eternal vigilance and constant righteous efforts. The forces of evil and misery are still rampant in the world and must be resisted. The powers of darkness have increased in accordance with the spread of the gospel. Whole nations are declaring atheism to be the law of the land. Atheism has become the greatest weapon Satan has to use, and its evil influence is bringing degradation to millions throughout the world. Even at this moment as the sun throws warm, genial rays on snowcapped summits and frost-covered valleys of this western land, the public press tells of increasing activity on the part of the evil one. Warlike activities and international misunderstandings prevent the establishing of peace and divert man’s inventive genius from the paths of science, art, and literature, and apply it to human retardation and the holocaust of war.”
      • “Men may yearn for peace, cry for peace, and work for peace, but there will be no peace until they follow the path pointed out by the Living Christ. He is the true light of men’s lives.”
    • A Man of the Priesthood
      • “The most precious thing in the world is a testimony of the truth. Truth never grows old, and the truth is that God is the source of your priesthood and mine, that he lives, that Jesus Christ stands at the head of this Church, and that every man who holds the priesthood, if he lives properly, soberly, industriously, humbly, and prayerfully, is entitled to the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. I know that it is true!”
      • “God help us to defend the truth—better than that, to live it, to exemplify it in our homes. What we owe to our parents we cannot express. Are you going to have that same influence on your children, you parents—fathers and mothers? Never set an improper example before them. You are men of the priesthood, and you are leaders. Never let them hear a cross word. You should control yourself. He is a weak man who flies into a passion, whether he is working a machine, plowing, or writing, or whatever he may be doing in the home. A man of the priesthood should not fly into a passion. Learn to be dignified.”
  • April 1964 General Conference
    • Blessed Are They That Do His Commandments
      • “Respect for another’s rights and property is fundamental in good government. It is a mark of refinement in any individual, it is a fundamental Christian virtue.”
      • “No other success can compensate for failure in the home. The poorest shack in which love prevails over a united family is of greater value to God and future humanity than any other riches. In such a home God can work miracles and will work miracles.”
    • Cleanliness and Morality
      • “I had in mind saying a word suggested by a visit to two fathers in this room—the two fathers of these two boys who have done so well tonight, and the pride in their sons which they had, the pride which every father has in his sons. My object in doing this was to make boys feel the responsibility of sonship.”
    • Closing Remarks
      • “It is a great thing to be a father of boys and girls. I think it is a precious thing for our boys and girls to realize their responsibility, to carry their father’s name in love and honor.”
  • October 1963 General Conference
    • The True Purpose of Life
      • “What a travesty on human nature when a person or a group of persons, though endowed with a consciousness of being able to rise in human dignity to realms indiscernible by lower creatures, yet will still be content to obey animal instincts, without putting forth efforts to experience the joy of goodness, purity, self-mastery, and faith that spring from compliance to moral rules!”
      • “If you have lived true to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and continue to do so, happiness will fill your soul. If you vary from it and become conscious that you have fallen short of what you know is right, you are going to be unhappy even though you have the wealth of the world.”
    • To the Priesthood
      • “A man who cannot control his temper is not very likely to control his passions, and no matter what his pretensions in religion, he moves in daily life very close to the animal plane. Religion is supposed to lift us on a higher level. Religion appeals to the spirit in man, your real person, and yet how often, notwithstanding our possessing a testimony of the truth, we yield to the carnal side of our nature.”
    • A Great Responsibility
      • “One of our greatest duties as we leave this great conference is to have the spirit of the gospel in our homes. Fathers, set a proper example to your boys. And mothers, teach them in accordance with the Doctrine and Covenants, faith in God, repentance, and baptism.”
  • April 1963 General Conference
    • Priesthood and Quorums Supply Initial Need
      • “When that word comes to you—call it conscience, or, if you are in the Church and doing your duty, the whisperings of the Spirit, because you are entitled to be a partaker of it—then be true to that whispering, and some day you will know for yourself that you are in harmony with the universe.”
    • The Restored Gospel—An Ensign to the Nations
      • “There is not a principle which is taught by the Savior of men but is applicable to the growth, development, and happiness of mankind. Every one of his teachings seems to touch the true philosophy of living. I accept them wholeheartedly. I like to study them. I like to teach them. It is a job to try to live them.”
      • “God bless and prosper the Church as it bears witness to the reality of the personality of Deity and to the fact that God has again revealed himself to man and established a means whereby spirituality, brotherhood, and universal peace may be fostered among the children of men.”
    • Radiation of the Gospel
      • “Our homes radiate what we are, and that radiation comes from what we say and how we act in the home.”
  • October 1962 General Conference
    • The Gospel and the Individual
      • “Today, brethren, we are in danger of actually surrendering our personal and property rights. This development, if it does occur in full form, will be a sad tragedy for our people. We must recognize that property rights are essential to human liberty.”
      • “Force and compulsion will never establish the ideal society. This can come only by a transformation within the individual soul—a life redeemed from sin and brought in harmony with the divine will. Instead of selfishness, men must be willing to dedicate their ability, their possessions, their lives, if necessary, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for the alleviation of the ills of mankind. Hate must be supplanted by sympathy and forbearance. Peace and true prosperity can come only by conforming our lives to the law of love, the law of the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. A mere appreciation of the social ethics of Jesus is not sufficient—men’s hearts must be changed!”
      • “In these days of uncertainty and unrest, liberty-loving people’s greatest responsibility and paramount duty is to preserve and proclaim the freedom of the individual, his relationship to Deity, and the necessity of obedience to the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only thus will mankind find peace and happiness.”
      • “However, above all else, strive to support good and conscientious candidates of either party who are aware of the great dangers inherent in communism, and who are truly dedicated to the Constitution in the tradition of our rounding fathers. They should also pledge their sincere fealty to our way of liberty—a liberty which aims at the preservation of both personal and property rights. Study the issues, analyze the candidates on these grounds, and then exercise your franchise as free men and women. Never be found guilty of exchanging your birthright for a mess of pottage.”
    • Priesthood and Perfecting the Saints
      • “God bless the priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ throughout the whole world. They are called to serve; to serve the members of the Church, and to serve the world by preaching the everlasting gospel. May the Lord guide us, inspire us, never leave us alone.”
    • Cultivate the Spirit of Service
      • “It is an honor to labor with you, brethren and sisters, throughout the entire Church. God bless you that you may realize the blessings that are yours through the revelation and restoration in this day and age of the world of the priesthood of God, which gives you authority to represent him in proclaiming the reality of the existence of the Father and his Beloved Son Jesus Christ, and the restoration in this day of the gospel as given through Christ the Lord as the plan of salvation to all mankind, through obedience to which peace shall be established on earth, and the will of God carried forth to the salvation and exaltation of his children.”
  • April 1962 General Conference
    • The Divine Church
      • “The gospel teaches that Christ is the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world. No true follower is satisfied to accept him merely as a great teacher, a great reformer, or even as the One Perfect Man. The Man of Galilee is not figuratively, but literally the Son of the Living God.”
      • “Resistance is necessary along with obtaining a sense of the real divinity. There should be developed also the power of self-mastery. Someone has said that when God makes the prophet, he does not unmake the man. I believe that, though being “born anew,” and being entitled to new life, new vigor, new blessings, yet the old weaknesses may still remain. The adversary stands by, ever eager and ready to attack and strike us at our weakest point.”
      • “This power of self-control in regard to our bodily longings, satisfying the passions, applies to every member of the Church of Christ. In some way, the Evil One will attack us; some way he can weaken us. In some way, he will bring before us that which will weaken our souls and will tend to thwart the true development of the spirit within, the strengthening and growth of the spirit, which time cannot kill, which is as enduring as the Eternal Father of the spirit. And the things which will tend to dwarf this spirit or to hinder its growth are things which members of the Church are called upon to resist.”
    • Preparing Young Men for the Priesthood
      • “In conclusion, let me say that just the holding of the priesthood is a blessing, a blessing which too few of us in our Church fully realize, and in order that that realization might become more prized, our bishops should teach the young man who is recommended to receive the Aaronic Priesthood what the ordination to the Aaronic Priesthood means. You who were present at the inspirational meeting last evening in this building saw on the screen a bishop interviewing a young man twelve years of age in the presence of happy parents. There was a lesson for the entire Church.”
      • “Some may even take the name of God in vain. A man of the priesthood cannot do that when he receives the obligation to render service to others, as a representative of Jesus Christ. He who takes the name of God in vain dishonors his priesthood.”
      • “Others may neglect their duties. Others may make fun of their teachers in day school. Others may break windows, but the bearer of the priesthood cannot do those things. It is the bishop’s duty to teach them good citizenship and their duties in the priesthood.”
    • The Voice of Appreciation
      • “The paramount theme of this great conference has been the reality of God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. The founding fathers of our republic incorporated in the Preamble of our Constitution their belief in a Creator who had created mankind on a basis of equality with certain inalienable rights, chief of which were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
  • October 1961 General Conference
    • The Cause of Liberty
      • “How utterly foolish men are to quarrel, fight, and cause misery, destruction, and death when the gifts of a Divine and Loving Father are all around us for the asking—are already in our possession if we would but recognize them.”
      • “The principles of the restored gospel as revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, are the surest, safest guide to mortal man. Christ is the light to humanity. In that light man sees his way clearly. When it is rejected, the soul of man stumbles in darkness. No person, no group, no nation can achieve true success without following him.”
    • Except a Man be Born Again
      • “That is why we like to have every young man and every young woman utilize his or her time intelligently, usefully, to bring the soul in harmony with the spirit, that we all might be partakers of God’s Spirit, partakers of his divine nature. That is the privilege, fellow workers, of all who hold the priesthood of God.”
    • Show Your Faith by Your Works
      • “I give you my testimony that God lives; that he is close to us; that his spirit is real, that his voice is real; that Jesus Christ, his Son, stands at the head of this great work; and no matter how much the atheistic philosophy takes hold of blinded boys and girls and men who hear Satan’s voice, the truth stands as declared by the Father and the Son to that boy Prophet. You and I and all the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have the responsibility to declare that truth to the world, and the world is full of honest men and women waiting to hear that truth. Let us not condemn them. Condemn the evil men who would blind them with their sophistry and with false reasoning. Some of our young boys are so blinded, but it is our duty as officers of the Church to lead them from that blindness to the truth.”
  • April 1961 General Conference
    • The Destiny of Youth
      • “The young man who closes the door behind him, who draws the curtains, and there in silence pleads with God for help, should first pour out his soul in gratitude for health, for friends, for loved ones, for the gospel, for the manifestations of God’s existence.”
      • “I cannot conceive of a young man’s going astray who will kneel down by his bedside in the morning and pray to God to help him keep himself unspotted from the sins of the world. I think that a young girl will not go far wrong who will kneel down in the morning and pray that she might be kept pure and spotless during the coming day. I cannot think that a Latter-day Saint will hold enmity in his heart if he will sincerely, in secret, pray God to remove from his heart all feelings of envy and malice toward any of his fellow men.”
    • A Time of Preparation
      • “To render service for two or three years in the mission field is a blessing to anyone. It is recognized as such by thousands of parents throughout the Church who appreciate the value of such labor to their sons and daughters, in whom this experience awakens an appreciation of home and of the gospel. Parents know also that missionary activity brings into the plane of consciousness a knowledge of the truth of the gospel, which the young men have perhaps felt but not expressed.”
    • Serve Your Fellow Men in Love
      • “To no other group of men in all the world is given a better opportunity to engage in the noblest calling in life than that which is afforded the elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To establish salvation and peace to the extent of their individual efforts, their lives are dedicated. To make the world a better or a safer or a fitter place for man, their talents and means are consecrated.”
  • October 1960 General Conference
    • What About Jesus Christ
      • “The members of the Church throughout the world find confirmation of their testimony in every performance of duty. They know that the gospel teaches them to be better individuals, that obedience to the principles of the gospel makes them stronger men and truer women. Every day such knowledge comes to them, and they cannot gainsay it.”
    • To the Priesthood
      • “Satan is still determined to have his way, and his emissaries have power given them today as they have not had throughout the centuries. Be prepared to meet conditions that may be severe—ideological conditions that seem reasonable—but depend upon that spirit within. You are entitled to interpret the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. They are real. God is guiding this Church. Be true to it, loyal to it. Be true to your families, loyal to them. Protect your children. Guide them, not arbitrarily, but through the kind example of a father, a loving mother, and so contribute to the strength of the Church by exercising your Priesthood in your home and in your lives.”
    • It Has Been Glorious
      • “Hold to that thought in the midst of an atheistic world, mentioned by Brother Benson and others, while there are godless men who deny the resurrection of Christ, who deny his living spirit, and who have taught for forty years young men and young women to deny him. That is a terrible thing when you think of it. Some of us thought twenty years ago that such a godless organization would break of its own weight, and now young men who were ten years of age when communistic ideology took possession of so many are now fifty years of age.”
  • April 1960 General Conference
    • To the Priesthood
      • “First, learning one’s duty, and that means learning what kind of life a man who holds the Priesthood should live, being true to himself, to his loved ones, to the Church, to God. Every individual has that duty, and particularly every individual who holds the Priesthood. If he is honest to himself he is honest with the brethren; he is fair in his dealings in business circles, in politics he speaks the truth; he merits the confidence of his associates in business, civic areas, and particularly he should live so as to merit the confidence of members of the Church who trust him.”
    • Duty of the Church—To Teach Fundamental Principles of a Good Life
      • “It is easy to see temporal things. It is easy to yield to lascivious things. It requires little or no effort to indulge in anything physical and animal-like. But to be born out of that world into a spiritual world is advancement that the Lord requires of each of us.”
      • “Our mission, then, is to resist evil as well as to seek that which is high.”
    • Did Not Your Hearts Burn
      • “We have had testimonies during this conference, the testimony of the Spirit, that we are children of our Father. We have had testimony that God is a living Being. We have had testimony that Christ is at the head of his Church. Have you not felt that testimony? We have had testimony of the Spirit that he has revealed in this dispensation the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Have you not felt that, too, this conference? We have never held a greater conference.”
  • October 1959 General Conference
    • Preach the Word
      • “In their false teachings the Communists accept the doctrine of Marx, who denies the existence of God, and repudiates man’s immortality. Second, they deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, and of course, his resurrection. They challenge the free agency of man.”
      • “My dear fellow workers, it is just as easy for me to accept as a divine truth the fact that Christ preached to the spirits in prison while his body lay in the tomb as it is for me to look at you from this pulpit. It is true! It is just as easy for me to realize and note this—that one may so live that he may receive impressions and direct messages through divine inspiration. The veil is thin between those who hold the priesthood and divine messengers on the other side of the veil.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “We have one of the most sacred covenants in all the world pertaining to the happiness of the home, and there are men within the sound of my voice who have forgotten how sacred that covenant is. The Brethren of the Twelve, the General Authorities of the Church, the stake authorities, are urging youth everywhere to go to the temple to be married. Don’t you go to that temple unless you are ready to accept the covenants that you make.”
      • “I plead with the army assembled tonight in this Priesthood meeting, to keep true to the covenants made in the House of God. You have no right to neglect your wives and go and seek the company of others who seem to be more attractive to you because you are thrown with them in daily life, in your business affairs, or in Church affairs. This may seem general, but while I speak to you, a wife with her tears and her pleadings comes to me now, asking, “Won’t you just say a prayer, won’t you offer a prayer to try to bring my husband back?” Well, she may have been to blame for the trouble she said she was partly to blame—but I know he was to blame, for he is a man who holds the Priesthood and he has no right to break his covenants. We have too many divorces in the Church, and men, I think we are to blame for most of them—not all, but most of them.”
    • A Word in Parting
      • “Thank heaven there are hundreds and thousands who believe that testimony and repudiate the claims of the atheists who boast that man is his own god, and have already poisoned the minds of a generation of young men and women. They started this, as some of you will remember, forty years ago, and during that forty years they have poisoned those young boys and girls with the thought that there is no God.”
      • “Yours is a great mission. Our thanks to God our Father for it. Our membership in his Church, and our privilege of association in the brotherhood of Christ cannot be overstated. Morning, noon, and night, all through our lives our souls are filled with gratitude for the blessings that are ours in our associations in the Church of Jesus Christ. It is a glorious opportunity!”
  • April 1959 General Conference
    • To the Priesthood
      • “Fulfilling all righteousness is a command of God, so there you have the entrance into his kingdom. You have obedience to a command of God, and you have the beautiful, the most applicable figure that can possibly be given in fulfilling all righteousness. You bury yourself, you bury your bad habits, you bury your sins, and you come forth in newness of life, just as Christ came forth the resurrection.”
    • Training of Youth
      • “Our children are our most precious possessions. They are treasures of eternity. None of them should be lost. Our Father’s glory is in their salvation. As a Church we have great opportunity to reach these young people, and as individuals—teachers and officers—we have a great responsibility in teaching them correct principles.”
      • “We are living in an age of gadgetry which threatens to produce a future generation of softness. Flabbiness of character more than flabbiness of muscles lies at the root of most of the problems facing American youth.”
    • Closing Address
      • “God help us to be true to our responsibility and to our callings, and especially to the responsibility we bear as fathers and mothers of the children of Zion—heaven’s treasures given to us.”
  • October 1958 General Conference
    • To the Priesthood
      • “When a man accepts the Priesthood, he accepts the obligation of controlling himself under any circumstances.”
    • The Mission of Lay Members
      • “So there are influences at work in society which are undermining the manhood and womanhood of today. It is these unseen influences which come from the world that influence us when we are least prepared to defend ourselves. When we do not withstand the encroachments of these evil influences, we weaken the possibility of defending the Church of Jesus Christ. This is an individual work. What the individuals are, that the aggregate is. Jesus influenced individuals, knowing that if the individual is pure, strong, a thousand individuals would make a strong community, and a thousand communities would make a strong nation. Individual responsibility!”
      • “When that still, small voice calls us to the performance of duty, insignificant though it may seem, and its performance unknown to anyone save the individual and God, he who responds gains corresponding strength. Temptation often comes in the same quiet way. Perhaps yielding to it may not be known by anyone save the individual and his God, but if he does yield to it, he becomes to that extent weakened and spotted with the evil of the world.”
    • A Blessing
      • “God bless those who speak evil against us because they do not know us, and give us charity in our hearts for them, and may he enlighten their minds and open the vision of their souls that they may see Christ’s Church as it is and that for which it stands.”
  • April 1958 General Conference
    • Something Higher Than Self
      • “Religion is supposed to lift us on a higher level. Religion appeals to the spirit in man, the real person, and yet how often notwithstanding our possessing a testimony of the truth, we yield to the carnal side of our nature. The man who quarrels in his home, banishes from his heart the spirit of religion.”
      • “Any quarreling in the home is antagonistic to the spirituality which Christ would have us develop within us, and it is in our daily life that these expressions have their effect.”
      • “So live, then, that each day will find you conscious of having wilfully made no person unhappy. No one who has lived a well-spent day will have a sleepless night because of a stricken conscience.”
    • To the Priesthood
      • “Brethren, the Church of Jesus Christ, as you know and I know, is the mightiest force in the world, but you and your companions constitute the source of that force. The Lord cannot use his quorums without you; and every one has the responsibility of doing his best to maintain the standards of life.”
    • A Summation and a Blessing
      • “We cannot be true to ourselves and to our loved ones, to our associates, without feeling a determination to know more about this great truth to which testimonies have been borne.”
      • “If you have that testimony of truth on your side, you can pass through the dark valley of slander, misrepresentation, and abuse, undaunted as though you wore a magic suit of mail, that no bullet could enter, no arrow could pierce. You can hold your head high, toss it fearlessly and defiantly, look every man calmly and unflinchingly in the eye, as though you rode, a victorious king returning at the head of your legions, with banners waving and lances glistening and bugles filling the air with music. You can feel the great expansive world of more health surging through you as the quickened blood courses through the body of him who is gladly, gloriously proud of physical health. You will know that all will come right in the end, that it must come, that all must flee before the great white light of truth, as the darkness slinks away into nothingness in the presence of the sunburst.”
  • April 1957 General Conference
    • Salvation, an Individual Responsibility
      • “Too many people in the world are sitting and giving only lip service to God; too many have forgotten him; too many are denying him; too many are crying, “Lord, Lord,” but fail to follow his principles. Many of us through selfishness are lingering near the edge of the animal jungle where Nature’s law demands us to do everything with self in view. Self-preservation is the first law of mortal life, but Jesus says, “He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.””
      • “In the Church no teacher who indulges in smoking should be permitted to teach our children in Primary and Sunday School. Through the Prophet Joseph the Lord gave the Word of Wisdom to all. It is time, in the light of revelation and the discoveries of science, that this Church upholds its principles regarding these things.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “Ward teachers, when you go home tonight, make a complete list of all those in your district, every boy, every girl. You may not go to a broken home, you may not find them there. Find out where they are and reach them. God bless you, and bless us all as we watch over the Church always.”
    • To Know God
      • “With all my soul, at the conclusion of this highly spiritual conference, I bless you that you may attain that testimony, that high spiritual state, which will make all who attain it ready to enter through the veil into the presence of God, our Eternal Father.”
  • October 1956 General Conference
    • Spirituality, the Goal in Life
      • “The spiritual road has Christ as its ideal, not the gratification of the physical, for he that would save his life, yielding to that present gratification of a seeming need, will lose his life.”
      • “Spirituality, our true aim, is the consciousness of victory over self and of communion with the Infinite. Spirituality impels one to conquer difficulties and acquire more and more strength. To feel one’s faculties unfolding and truth expanding the soul is one of life’s sublimest experiences. Would that all might so live as to experience that ecstasy!”
      • “An irreverent man has a crudeness about him that is repellent. He is cynical, often sneering, and always iconoclastic.”
      • “Three influences in home life awaken reverence in children and contribute to its development in their souls. These are: first, firm but Gentle Guidance; second, Courtesy shown by parents to each other, and to children; and third, Prayer in which children participate. In every home in this Church parents should strive to act intelligently in impressing children with those three fundamentals.”
    • To the Priesthood
      • “Keeping holy the Sabbath Day is a law of God, resounding through the ages from Mt. Sinai. You cannot transgress the law of God without circumscribing your spirit. Finally, our Sabbath, the first day of the week, commemorates the greatest event in all history: Christ’s resurrection and his visit as a resurrected being to his assembled Apostles. His birth, of course, was necessary, and just as great, so I say this is one of the greatest events in all history.”
    • Lord, Look at Our Hearts
      • “We have an election in November, in which you have the right to state who will fill the offices that are now to be filled in the nation, in the state, and in our local affairs. We ask, we plead that every member of the Church go to the polls in November and cast your vote for the men and women whom you wish to occupy the offices named. Now you choose, and choose wisely and prayerfully, but cast your vote.”
  • April 1956 General Conference
    • Harmony in the Home
      • “To the young people of the Church, particularly, I should like to say first that a happy home begins not at the marriage altar, but during the brilliant, fiery days of youth. The first contributing factor to a happy home is the sublime virtue of loyalty, one of the noblest attributes of the human soul. Loyalty means being faithful and true. It means fidelity to parents, fidelity to duty, fidelity to a cause or principle, fidelity to love. Disloyalty to parents during teen age is often a source of sorrow and sometimes tragedy in married life.”
      • “Next to loyalty to parents, I should like to urge loyalty to self. Remember, if you would be happy, if you reach the goal of success in the distant future, your first duty is to be loyal to the best that is in you, not to the basest.”
      • “Next to loyalty as contributive to a happy home, I should like to urge continued courtship, and apply this to grown people. Too many couples have come to the altar of marriage looking upon the marriage ceremony as the end of courtship instead of the beginning of an eternal courtship. Let us not forget that during the burdens of home life—and they come—that tender words of appreciation, courteous acts are even more appreciated than during those sweet days and months of courtship. It is after the ceremony and during the trials that daily arise in the home that a word of “thank you,” or “pardon me, “if you please,” on the part of husband or wife contributes to that love which brought you to the altar. It is well to keep in mind that love can be starved to death as literally as the body that receives no sustenance. Love feeds upon kindness and courtesy. It is significant that the first sentence of what is now known throughout the Christian world as the Psalm of Love, is, “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” The wedding ring gives no man the right to be cruel or inconsiderate, and no woman the right to be slovenly, cross, or disagreeable.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “Well, in every group assigned to you ward teachers, there are young folks who are crippled, there are young folks who are staggering, who need help morally. Somehow, some way, you can reach them and give them some help. Not just when you go to make a formal visit, when you are sitting there before the radio or the television, but at some party, some way, wherever they are going, get in their company, get their confidence, take a hold of their arm—”watch over them always.””
      • “Those two things we can do, in addition to what the bishoprics are now asking you to do: teach them their duty, watch over them always and see that they attend to their meetings.”
    • Closing Address
      • “We are not boasting; we are just stating facts. We might not say it to you officers of these auxiliaries, but we love you, and in our hearts are prayers for your success. And the priesthood quorums, the deacons and the Aaronic Priesthood, the teachers and the priests—there again, every one enrolled, an opportunity for every boy to be active; instead of having the gang-spirit, where the members try to destroy or to interfere with the ease and comfort of others, we have them active and rendering service to others. And that means, as President Clark stated, over a hundred thousand of them, and the Presiding Bishopric bringing in the Senior Aaronic members; then the Melchizedek, the elders, seventies, and high priests—there is where we touch our home life.”
  • October 1955 General Conference
    • An Expression of Gratitude
      • “Giving thanks means in this case, I am sure, a fullness of thanks, which is the outward expression of a grateful feeling. Gratitude is the feeling itself. That is in the heart. Thankfulness is measured by the number of words; gratitude is measured by the nature of our actions. Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude; gratitude the completion of thankfulness.”
      • “Truly, it is fitting to give thanks to the Lord and to talk of all his wondrous work; and in doing so, we must include the greatest of all of his blessings—the sending of his Only Begotten Son to give to all our Father’s children redemption, and to those who will listen and obey the gospel, salvation and exaltation in the kingdom of our Father. Obedience to the principles of the gospel brings happiness, and happiness is what all men seek. Indeed, the Prophet Joseph Smith said that “Happiness is the object and design of our existence, and will be the end thereof”—and this is important—”if we pursue the path that leads to it.” As an end in itself, happiness is never found; it comes incidentally.”
    • There Will Always Be Fleas
      • “Well, the best way to treat these lies and scandalous reports is so to live that our actions will prove their falsity, and that is what we are trying to do. There are “fleas,” and we shall have to treat them as such, I suppose. We shall always have people attacking us. As long as the Adversary to truth is free to exercise dominion in this world, we are going to have attacks, and the only way to meet those attacks is to live the Gospel.”
      • “We do not want people who are prompted by the spirit of the Adversary, the spirit of an apostate, to be poisoning the minds of our youth. The latter are too precious, and they are in our keeping.”
      • “No man will rise high who jeers at sacred things. The fine loyalties of life must be reverenced, or they will be foresworn in the day of trial.”
    • What Shall We Do?
      • “Let us go home with a determination to have our homes places of contentment and peace. There is not one of us who cannot contribute to that condition. The ideal home should be found among the members of the Church of Jesus Christ, and I am just sufficiently old-fashioned to think that the home is still the foundation of the state, especially of a republic. Do not forget it. And the state has no right to take your children and attempt to train them and substitute for your protection, mother, and your prayerful guidance.”
      • “Husbands, remember the covenants you have made to your wives. Do not permit our affections to be led away from the mother of your children. Mothers, do not forget that you owe something to your children and to your husband. You, too, can keep yourself attractive. You, too, can refrain from finding fault. You, too, can contribute to the happiness and contentment of the home, the sweetest place on earth. That is about as near heaven as you will get here. Do not make it a hell. Some do.”
  • April 1955 General Conference
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “These are but a few practical instances of the faith and devotion of the leaders and members of the Church of Jesus Christ. I bear you testimony tonight that the power, the spiritual power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ which comes from a testimony of the truth of the revealed and Restored Gospel is operative throughout the entire Church, and it is that power that gives the strength to it. It is the power of God unto salvation. Put the Lord to the test and you will find that he will answer and prove to you that he is overruling your affairs as well as the Church affairs. Financially, you may lose something, but the spiritual gain will far outweigh that seemingly financial loss.”
    • Righteousness Key to World Peace
      • “Fathers and mothers sometimes by unwise conduct unwittingly influence their children toward delinquency. Among these unwise acts, I mention first, disagreeing, or quarreling on the part of parents in the presence of children. Sometimes such quarrels arise out of an attempt to correct or to discipline a child. One parent criticizes, the other objects, and the good influence of the home, so far as the child is concerned, is nullified.”
      • “To quarreling of parents before children, to vulgarity, and to the condemnatory use of profanity, there may be added a third contributing factor to parental delinquency, and that is the non-conformity in the homes to Church standards. Remember, fellow parents, that children are quick to detect insincerity, and they resent in their feelings false pretension. Parents, of all people on earth, should be honest with their children. Keep your promises to them and speak the truth always. Children are more influenced by sermons you act than by sermons you preach. It is the consistent parent who gains the trust of his child. When children feel that you reciprocate their trust, they will not violate your confidence nor bring dishonor to your name.”
    • Closing Remarks
      • “Oh, what love is in your heart this moment as you contemplate the greatness and goodness of our Father throughout this Conference.”
  • October 1954 General Conference
    • Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God
      • “To the question in that letter sent to the auxiliaries, “How may parents render more effective co-operation?” came answers common to every article: First, parents should become acquainted with lessons and plans of the organization; second, take rather than send their children; third, set a proper example. In conclusion, parents, if you would have your children pray, then teach them to pray in the home. If you would have your children refrain from taking the name of God in vain, then let them never hear profanity pass your lips. If you would have your teenagers sense the value of keeping themselves true to their future husbands or wives, then let chastity and loyalty to your marriage covenant pervade the atmosphere of your own home. If you would have them refrain from the use of tobacco, then you refrain from the use of tobacco yourself.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “I ask you fellow workers to do again what undoubtedly you have done frequently, to sit down and commune with yourself. There is a battle on with you, and with me, every day. Fight out with yourself and decide upon your course of action regarding what your duty is first to your family. Of somebody getting into your life who will make an unhappiness or do some unhappiness in your home, as we have heard tonight.”
      • “There was no doubt in Simon’s mind about the reality of the power of the Holy Ghost. “What e’er thou art, act well thy part.” Are you a deacon, do the duties of a deacon well. Are you a teacher, do your work well. A priest watching over the Church, visiting with them—young men in this Church, if we could just do the duties of the teacher and of the priest, teaching people their duty, what a power for good to young men eighteen years of age, and nineteen. Not incorrigible, not recreants, but leaders. Brethren there is nothing in the world so powerful in guiding youth as to have them act well their parts in the priesthood.”
    • Let Us Make God the Center of Our Lives
      • “Let us then make God the center of our lives. That was one of the first admonitions given when the gospel was first preached to man. To have communion with God, through his Holy Spirit, is one of the noblest aspirations in life. It is when the peace and love of God have entered the soul, when serving him becomes the motive factor in one’s life and existence that we can touch other lives, quickening and inspiring them, even though no word be spoken. There is operative in the world a spiritual force as active and as real as the waves that have carried the message today to those tens of thousands by radio and television.”
  • April 1954 General Conference
    • To the Priesthood
      • “A true friend is loyal. Many acquaintances are not, and may not be. Be loyal to the Priesthood. Be loyal to your wives and to your families, loyal to your friends.”
      • “I cannot think that the Spirit of God will strive with a man who in any way helps to break up another man’s family. I care not what seeming attraction may be between him and the wife of the other man. God will withdraw his Spirit from such a one.”
    • Present Responsibility of the Church in Missionary Work
      • “One of our greatest responsibilities is to make accessible to faithful members of the Church in foreign lands suitable houses of the Lord. Tens of thousands of them are not able to come where temples are, and where they receive the blessings of the endowment, to have sealed to them their wives and their children for time and all eternity. Ours is the duty to carry the temple to them. It may not be expensive, but it will be complete, and thus will churches be built and strengthened throughout the world.”
    • Live—in All Things Outside Yourself by Love
      • “Now I have included the entire membership of the Church, excepting the little babes. I repeat, God bless you that the spirit of this great conference may go with you to bring peace into your hearts as you lose yourselves for the good of others; harmony in your homes as you curtail that impetuous tendency to cause discord, as you control that tongue and do not say the thing that hurts.”
  • October 1953 General Conference
    • The Kingdom of God or Catastrophe
      • “The paramount need in the world today is a clearer understanding by human beings of moral and spiritual values, and a desire and determination to attain them.”
      • “Never before in the history of the world has there been such a need of spiritual awakening. Unless there is such an awakening, there is danger of catastrophe among the nations of the world.”
      • “True, there are weighty problems to solve—evils of the slums, the ever-recurring conflicts between labor and capital, drunkenness, prostitution, international hatreds, and a hundred other current questions. But if heeded, Christ’s appeal for personal integrity, honor, fair-dealing, and love is basic in the proper solution of all these social and economic difficulties.”
    • Repentance
      • “Repentance, which is a changing of life. If you have been swearing, stop it. That is what repentance means. If you have been disobeying father or mother, cease your disobedience. If you have been thinking impure thoughts, substitute them with noble ideas. Repentance means ever to change your thoughts and acts for the better.”
      • “Analyze that and you will find that it means that instead of centering your thoughts on self, that God becomes the center of your existence; your thought is what you are going to do for him. You will pray to him at night. You will pray to him when you have some heavy task to perform. In your school work, pray. I know, you may not hear his voice always, and you may feel that he did not answer your question in your prayer, but in youth, keep praying, holding to the assurance that God is near you to help you.”
    • Plea for Living the Gospel Expressed
      • “This Church of Jesus Christ commonly known as “Mormonism,” is in the world to make people happy. Happiness is the end, really, of our existence. That happiness comes most effectively through service to our fellow men, and the Church is the most effective means in the world through which that service may be rendered.”
      • “There is no happiness without peace. Today, the President of the United States, his Cabinet, Congress, the Senate the House of Representatives, the Judiciary, are all seeking peace in the world. Nations are longing for it Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers who have children and grandchildren in the armed forces are praying daily that we might have peace.”
  • April 1953 General Conference
    • Two Paramount Obligations of Members of the Church
      • “Our most precious possession is the youth of the land, and to instruct them to walk uprightly and to become worthy citizens in the kingdom of God is our greatest obligation.”
      • “Religious freedom and the separation of church and state are clearly set forth in the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and no governmental agency can have any supervision, control, or jurisdiction over religion. Though our public schools may emphasize moral, ethical, and spiritual values as essential elements in the public school program, they cannot favor any particular religion or religious system. The teaching of religion is therefore definitely a responsibility of the home and the Church.”
      • “In discharging this responsibility, I say again, members of the Church should ever keep in mind two paramount obligations: (1) to put and to keep your home in order; and (2), to proclaim the divinity of Jesus Christ and the essentiality of his teachings to the salvation of the human family.”
    • Be True in your Priesthood Roles
      • “Let us thank God every morning, every night, in our family prayers, that we live in the United States of America, the Constitution of which vouchsafes individual freedom, and let us pray also, that the Lord will frustrate the plans of the Communists who would deprive us of that freedom.”
      • “May God add his blessings to the instructions and the reports given this night, may we depart with greater determination in our hearts to serve the Lord and keep his commandments, may we go forth with greater resolution to defend and keep his commandments, may we go forth with greater resolution to defend one another in righteous living, to defend the Church, not to speak against our neighbors, nor against authorities of the Church, local, stake or general. Let us avoid evil speaking, let us avoid slander and gossip. These are poisons to the soul to those who indulge. Evil speaking injures the reviler more than the reviled.”
    • Final Blessing
      • “Much of what you brethren and sisters do we never hear about, and it seems as though you are working without any visible results, but no good deed, no kind word can be spoken without its effect being felt for good upon all. Sometimes the good may be infinitesimal, but as a rock that is thrown in a pool starts a wave from the center which continues to enlarge until every part of the shore is touched, so your deeds, silent, many of them, unknown unspoken, unheralded, continue to radiate and touch many hearts.”
  • October 1952 General Conference
    • Conditions in Church Encouraging—Prospects Bright
      • “I am sorry that I must now sound a note of discouragement, for I cannot refrain from referring to the attitude of selfishness, distrust, and hatred manifest by the leaders of communism. How they hate America, and everything American! They are not only anti-American—they are anti-Christian! By every means possible—newspapers, billboards, documents, radio—they try to inculcate hatred in the hearts of the youth.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “Again, every Sunday in Sacrament meeting we give our word of honor, that we are willing to take upon us the name of the Son, that we will always remember him, that we will keep his commandments which he has given us, that we may have his Spirit to be with us. What a covenant! And we make it in the presence of one another and in the presence of God whom we are worshipping that day.”
      • “Another promise: do you remember what you said when you took your sweet wife through the Temple, your confidence in her, her purity, her worthiness was supreme—as pure as a snowflake, as spotless as a sunbeam, as worthy of motherhood as the purest of virgins. And she had that same confidence in you, as a husband and father; and together you stood in the House of the Lord and covenanted with each other that you would be true.”
      • “We are a covenant people. I am thankful we are. We develop the virtues mentioned by the gentleman to whom I referred at the opening of my remarks. We keep unsullied and untarnished our name; we have not let dishonor dim its luster, nor have we let shame leave its dark mark there. We pray for strength to do the right, though none might see us. We want grit to meet disaster with a smile. We teach loyalty to all who have claims upon us. We advise to exercise justice equally to friend and foe. We teach honor, truth, integrity, and square-dealing, but to all this we add sacredness of our word of honor.”
    • Closing Address
      • “The President is President of the Church, not favoring in this election either political party. The welfare of all members of the Church is equally considered by the President, his Counselors, and the General Authorities. Both political parties will be treated impartially.”
  • April 1952 General Conference
    • Favorable and Unfavorable Phases of Present-day Conditions
      • “The founders of this great republic had faith in the economic and political welfare of this country because they had faith in God. Today it is not uncommon to note an apologetic attitude on the part of men when they refer to the need of God governing in the affairs of men. Indeed, as has already been said, the success of communism depends largely upon the substitution of the belief in God by belief in the supremacy of the state.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “There is another matter to which I wish to refer. It is not very savory, but it is a condition that is giving us great concern, and that is the increasing number of divorces among Latter-day Saints, whereas here in the United States it is just a common thing. But brethren, we know what marriage is, what it should be, how sacred the marriage bond is; we know what it means to live a chaste life by men, as well as by women. Chastity is a standard of the Church; and it worries us deeply to see the large accumulation of applications for cancellations of the sealing ordinance. Indeed, they have become so numerous that we have had to appeal for help. As you know, there is but one who can cancel that, and if all his time were taken, that is, if he had to scrutinize every application as it should be, all his time would be taken for that one responsibility.”
      • “Let us instruct young people who come to us, first, young men throughout the Church, to know that a woman should be queen of her own body. The marriage covenant does not give the man the right to enslave her, or to abuse her, or to use her merely for the gratification of his passion. Your marriage ceremony does not give you that right.”
      • “Let them remember that gentleness and consideration after the ceremony is just as appropriate and necessary and beautiful as gentleness and consideration before the wedding.”
      • “Let us realize that manhood is not undermined by the practicing of continence, notwithstanding what some psychiatrists claim. Chastity is the crown of beautiful womanhood, and self-control is the source of true manhood, if you will know it, not indulgence. Sexual indulgence whets the passion, and creates morbid desire.”
    • What Doth It Profit
      • “Let us resolve that we shall practice more self-control in our homes, control our tempers and our tongues, and control our feelings, that they may not wander beyond the bounds of right and purity, more seeking the presence of God, realizing how dependent we are upon him for success in this life, and particularly for success in the positions we hold in the Church.”
      • “As we depart, let us be more determined to make beautiful homes, to be kinder husbands, more thoughtful wives, more exemplary to our children, determined that in our homes we are going to have just a little taste of heaven here on this earth.”
  • October 1951 General Conference
    • Counteracting Pernicious Ideas and Subversive Teachings
      • “The prevalence of pernicious ideas and subversive teachings which pervert the minds of the unstable and uninformed, and in some cases divert the youth from Church standards. In this regard there is reason for concern, too.”
      • “Our country’s greatest resource is our children, our young men and women whose characters will largely determine our nation’s future. If it were possible for me this morning to speak directly to the young men and women of the Church, I would say that you should always remember that true joy of life is found, not in physical indulgence and excesses, but in clean living and high thinking; in rendering to others, not inconvenience, injury, or pain, but encouragement, cheer, and helpfulness.”
      • “Thoughts are the seeds of acts, and precede them. Mere compliance with the word of the Lord, without a corresponding inward desire, will avail but little. Indeed, such outward actions and pretending phrases may disclose hypocrisy, a sin that Jesus most vehemently condemned.”
      • “The Savior’s constant desire and effort were to implant in the mind right thoughts, pure motives, noble ideals, knowing full well that right words and actions would eventually follow.”
      • “I am trying to emphasize that each one is the architect of his own fate, and he is unfortunate, indeed, who will try to build himself without the inspiration of God, without realizing that he, grows from within, not from without.”
      • “What a man continually thinks about determines his actions in times of opportunity and stress. A man’s reaction to his appetites and impulses when they are aroused gives the measure of that man’s character. In these reactions are revealed the man’s power to govern or his forced servility to yield.”
      • “No man can disobey the word of God and not suffer for so doing. No sin, however secret, can escape retribution. True, you may lie and not be detected: you may violate virtue without its being known by any who could scandalize you, yet you cannot escape the judgment that follows such transgression. The lie is lodged in the recesses of your mind, and impairment of your character will be reflected sometime, somehow in your countenance or bearing. Your moral turpitude, though only you, your accomplice, and God may ever know it, will some day canker your soul.”
      • “We are grieved when we see or hear men and women, some of whom even profess membership in the Church, looking with favor upon the pernicious teachings of these groups, especially Communism. These credulous, misguided persons claim to be advocates of peace, and accuse those who oppose them as advocates of war. They should remember that all of us should ever keep in mind that there are some eternal principles more precious than peace dearer than life itself.”
      • “Free agency, for example, is a divine gift, more precious than peace, more to be desired even than life. Any nation, any organized group of individuals that would deprive man of this heritage should be denounced by all liberty-loving persons. Associated with this fundamental principle is the right of individual initiative, the right to worship how, where, or what one pleases, and the simple privilege to leave a country, if one choose, without having to skulk out as a culprit at the risk of being shot and killed.”
  • April 1951 General Conference
    • To the Priesthood
      • “Missionary work is strenuous when it is done properly, and we do not like missionaries to go out and not do it properly.”
      • “Will the bishops please take more care in recommending members to do temple work, to perform temple ordinances. Now the great majority of those who are going through the temple are worthy, and it is a glorious work. But if one or two unworthy get into the company and make some objectionable remark or leave an objectionable sign somewhere it tends to retard the spirit and to discourage some young man or young woman who came anticipating a glorious spiritual feast.”
      • “No person living in this Church can say he or she has not an immediate duty. It may be attendance at a priesthood meeting; the Aaronic Priesthood or Melchizedek. It may be fasting on the first Sunday and giving fast offerings for the poor. Do not say those are insignificant duties; it may be the duty of attending worship on the Sabbath day, either in Sunday School, Priesthood meeting or Sacrament meeting or Mutual at night; it may be visiting a sick neighbor; or it is the payment of tithing. Whatever the immediate duty, perform it. That is the first step.”
      • “Before you take that step ahead, ask yourself whether you can justify taking it if you were called into the presence of your Father in Heaven. If you can, take it.”
    • The Greatest Responsibility…The Greatest Honor
      • “God bless you, brothers and sisters. May the spirit of this occasion remain in our hearts. May it be felt throughout the uttermost parts of the earth, wherever there is a branch in all the world, that that spirit might be a unifying power in increasing the testimony of the divinity of this work, that it may grow in its influence for good in the establishment of peace throughout the world.”
    • Remarks at the Funeral of George Albert Smith
      • “The purpose of these services is to pay tribute to our departed brother, and, secondly to bring solace, and peace to the sorrowing hearts of the bereaved.”
  • October 1950 General Conference
    • Quests Determine Man’s Successes
      • “Man’s success or failure, happiness or misery, depends upon what he seeks and what he chooses. What a man is, what a nation is, may largely be determined by his or its dominant quest. It is a tragic thing to carry through life a low concept of it.”
      • “To repent—this we should note carefully—is to feel regret, contrition, or compunction for what one has done or omitted to do. It means to change one’s mind in regard to past or intended actions or conduct on account of regret or dissatisfaction. It means to conquer selfishness, greed, jealousy, fault-finding, and slander. It means to control one’s temper. It means to rise above the sordid things which pure nature would prompt us to do to gratify our appetites and passions, and to enter into the higher or spiritual realm.”
    • Address to the Priesthood
      • “In the classrooms children should be taught, should be free to discuss, free to speak, free to participate in class work, but no member of the class has the right to distract another student by jostling or making light and frivolous remarks. And I think in this Church, in the priesthood quorums and classes and in auxiliaries, teachers and superintendents ought not to permit it. Disorder injures the child who makes it. He should learn that when he is in society there are certain things which he cannot do with impunity. He cannot trespass upon the rights of his associates.”
  • April 1950 General Conference
    • Free Agency…A Divine Gift
      • “With free agency there comes responsibility. If a man is to be rewarded for righteousness and punished for evil, then common justice demands that he be given the power of independent action. A knowledge of good and evil is essential to man’s progress on earth. If he were coerced to do right at all times, or were helplessly enticed to commit sin, he would merit neither a blessing for the first nor punishment for the second.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “Communism is anti-Christ. We have heard that some of our members suspect that stories which come out of Russia are exaggerated. Do not be deceived.”
      • “And to be trusted, young men, is a greater compliment than to be loved, and you cannot violate that trust.”
  • October 1949 General Conference
    • Missions and Missionaries of the Church
      • “It is well to say here that the direct responsibility of preaching the gospel rests upon the priesthood of the Church—not upon the women, though the efficiency of the latter in cottage meetings, in Primaries, and Sunday Schools, and in other phases of missionary work, is of the highest order, and their willingness, even eagerness, to labor is not excelled by that of the young men.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Meeting
      • “Some of our foolish girls, here in the city particularly, are becoming addicts to nicotine. We should warn them, labor with them, not drive them from us, bring them into our Mutuals, our Sunday Schools, and into our socials where they may mingle with those who cherish higher ideals. I want to tell you, brethren, that we cannot with impunity sit by and be satisfied with having the best of our boys and girls come to auxiliary and priesthood meetings and let the others go unvisited.”
      • “If parents are failing in guiding the youth then it is the duty of ward teachers and priesthood quorums and auxiliary teachers to supplant in the lives of these children the love which they are losing perhaps because of broken homes.”
  • April 1949 General Conference
    • Choose You This Day Whom Ye Will Serve
      • “It is the duty of parents and of the Church not only to teach but also to demonstrate to young people that living a life of truth and moral purity brings joy and happiness, while violations of moral and social laws result only in dissatisfaction, sorrow, and, when carried to extreme, in degradation.”
      • “Let your needs rule you, pamper them—you will see them multiply like insects in the sun. The more you give them, the more they demand. He is senseless who seeks for happiness in material prosperity alone.”
      • “A spotless character, founded upon the ability to say no in the presence of those who mock and jeer, wins the respect and love of men and women whose opinion is most worthwhile. Drinking and petting parties form an environment in which the moral sense becomes dulled, and unbridled passion holds sway. It then becomes easy to take the final step downward in moral disgrace.”
      • “Brethren and sisters, spirituality is the consciousness of victory over self, and of communion with the Infinite. Spirituality impels one to conquer difficulties and acquire more and more strength. To feel one’s faculties unfolding and truth expanding the soul is one of life’s sublimest experiences.”
    • Missionary Work
      • “Modern science has made youth a little more daring, but I will tell you the danger is just as great. Warn, warn youth of the dangers of the flesh, the works of the flesh. Never have I been more thankful in my life for noble parents.”
      • “Well, brethren, God bless you. God bless the work, the missionaries abroad; protect them from evil. They are in the midst of it. God bless these mission presidents, that they may have influence with the young boys who are getting discouraged, some of them, and bless you parents at home who are sacrificing to send them, and you men of the priesthood and the quorums, that you may gather around those who are seemingly indifferent and win them into quorum activity.”
  • October 1948 General Conference
    • A Plea for Better Environment
      • “We have been termed the most lawless nation in the world. This is not merely that we have so many laws that any one enactment loses sanctity. This is not merely that the administration of criminal law has failed to keep pace with our urbanization. This is not merely that we feel that individual rights stand above the law. Deeper than all this lies a form of lawlessness that pervades our whole people, that infect our children—the tragic result of our unlimited natural resources, the facility of their wealth and the apparent omnipotence of our machinery—the heritage in our generation of the vicious belief that somehow more can be gotten out of life than one puts into it. This is truly in its deepest and most devastating sense a belief in lawlessness.”
      • “Let us here and now express gratitude for the Church of Jesus Christ with quorums and auxiliaries specially organized to combat these evils. It was established by divine revelation of God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. Its glorious mission is to proclaim the truth of the restored gospel; to uplift society that people may mingle more amicably one with another; to create in our communities a wholesome environment in which our children may find strength to resist temptation and encouragement to strive for cultural and spiritual attainment; to make ineffective the influence of designing men who would make profit out of their fellows who are fallen so low as to be slaves to their appetites and passions—and who would fill their purses through the weaknesses of addicts to gambling, and the pitiable courtesan outcasts. The gospel is a rational philosophy that teaches men how to get happiness in this life, and exaltation in the life to come.”
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “These pointed questions are put in the recommend purposely, and they mean something, because those who go out to represent the Church are chosen. They are set apart. They are leaders. They are teachers. They are ambassadors of truth. Please, when you bring these young men and young women to the members of the Council of the Twelve and place in the hands of the Council of the Twelve this written recommendation with your signature, be sure that you have made a thorough investigation, because it is embarrassing, very embarrassing, to the young man to be rejected as a representative.”
  • April 1948 General Conference
    • Facing Another World Crisis
      • “When we sincerely accept God as our Father and make him the center of our being, we become conscious of a new aim in life. No longer is the chief end of daily life merely to nourish and to pamper the body as all animals do. Spiritual attainment, not physical indulgence, becomes the chief goal. God is not viewed from the standpoint of what we may get from him, but what we may give to him. Only in the complete surrender of our inner life may we rise above the selfish, sordid pull of nature.”
  • October 1947 General Conference
    • The Significance of World Trends
      • “Infidelity and sexual immorality are two principal evils that threaten to weaken and to wreck present-day civilization. Unfortunately, the trends of modern life are tending to disintegrate the very foundation of the Christian home. Sexual laxity among young people, birth control, and intemperance are its insidious and vicious enemies. When family life disintegrates, the foundation and bulwark of human society is undermined.”
      • “Men of the priesthood, we must continue to declare that the gospel, the Glad Tidings of Great Joy, is the true guide to mankind; and that men and women are happiest and most content who live nearest to its teachings.”
  • April 1947 General Conference
    • Honoring the Utah Pioneers—and Lasting Values
      • “Any man who humbles a daughter of Eve to rob her of her virtue and cast her off dishonored and defiled, is her destroyer and is responsible to God for the deed. If the refined Christian society of the nineteenth century will tolerate such a crime, God will not, but he will call the perpetrator to account. He will be damned; in hell he will lift Up his eyes, being in torment until he has paid the uttermost farthing and made full atonement for his sins. The defiler of the innocent is the one who should be branded with infamy and cast out from respectable society and shunned as a pest or as a contagious disease is shunned. The doors of respectable families should be closed against him, and he should be frowned upon by all high-minded and virtuous persons. Wealth, influence, and position should not screen him from their righteous indignation. His sin is one of the blackest in the calendar of crime, and he should be cast down from the high pinnacle of respectability and consideration to find his place among the worst of felons.”
  • October 1946 General Conference
    • Safeguards Against the Delinquency of Youth
      • “There was the spirit of wartime abandon, for example, with its lasting philosophy which provided justification to less resolute wills to violate the conventions of society. Lessons in school became secondary. Girls sacrificed virtue on a false shrine of patriotism. Arrests for prostitution increased three hundred seventy-five percent, disorderly conduct three hundred fifty-seven percent, and drunkenness and driving while intoxicated one hundred seventy-four percent among girls under eighteen in the wartime years. To those who were not grounded in fundamentals, established values disappeared, and an attitude of impermanence superseded individual responsibility. Conflicts between liberty and license manifested themselves in wrongdoing. Personal responsibility in too many homes has become archaic and old fashioned.”
      • “A clean man is a national asset. A pure woman is the incarnation of true national glory. A citizen who loves justice and hates evil is better than a battleship. The strength of any community consists of and exists in the men who are pure, clean, upright and straightforward, ready for the right and sensitive to every approach of evil. Let such ideals be the standard of citizenship.”
  • April 1946 General Conference
    • The Lord’s Sacrament
      • “There are three things fundamentally important associated with the administration of the sacrament. The first is self-discernment. It is introspection. “This do in remembrance of me,” but we should partake worthily, each one examining himself with respect to his worthiness.”
      • “Secondly, there is a covenant made; a covenant even more than a promise. You have held up your hand, some of you, or if in England when signing a document, put your hand on the Bible, signifying the value of your promise or of the oath that you took. All this indicates the sacredness of a covenant. There is nothing more important in life than that. Until the nations realize the value of a covenant and promises and conduct themselves accordingly, there will be little trust among them. Instead there will be suspicion, doubt, and signed agreements, “scraps of paper,” because they do not value their word. A covenant, a promise, should be as sacred as life. That principle is involved every Sunday when we partake of the sacrament.”
      • “Thirdly, there is another blessing, and that is a sense of close relationship with the Lord. There is an opportunity to commune with oneself and to commune with the Lord. We meet in the house that is dedicated to him; we have turned it over to him; we call it his house. Well, you may rest assured that he will be there to inspire us if we come in proper attune to meet him. We are not prepared to meet him if we bring into that room our thoughts regarding our business affairs, and especially if we bring into the house of worship feelings of hatred toward our neighbor, or enmity and jealousy towards the Authorities of the Church. Most certainly no individual can hope to come into communion with the Father if that individual entertain any such feelings. They are so foreign to worship, and so foreign, particularly, to the partaking of the sacrament.”
      • “But the lesson I wish to leave tonight is: Let us make that sacrament hour one of the most impressive means of coming in contact with God’s spirit. Let the Holy Ghost, to which we are entitled, lead us into his presence, and may we sense that nearness, and have a prayer offered in our hearts which he will hear.”
    • Centennial of Utah
      • “No state in the union can look with greater pride upon the achievements of its pioneers than can the state of Utah. It is commendable and highly fitting, therefore, that the governor and state legislature have set apart the year 1947 as the Centennial year, in which to pay tribute to these great empire builders.”
  • October 1945 General Conference
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “The missionary field is not a reform school. True, it does bring about a reformation in those who need reforming. Missionary experience develops character, and brings the sincere laborer into spiritual contact with his Father in heaven, but no young man and no young woman should be sent out to be reformed. Stake and ward organizations of the Church are established for that purpose.”
    • Old Battles Yet to be Fought—New Victories to Win
      • “In charity we can say that the Christianity Nietzsche condemns is not the gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the Redeemer of man. But egotists and misled people who cannot discriminate between truth and error still find themselves wavering with respect to the divine mission of Jesus Christ. Every true Christian, and especially every faithful member of the Church of Christ should be militant in defending the principles of the gospel.”
      • “I know of no force so potent in eradicating these and all other enemies of peace from the human heart as the gospel of Jesus Christ. True religion is today the world’s greatest need—in a sense by the individual of a relationship with God—that indefinable something which enters into the soul of man and which unites him with his Creator.”
  • April 1945 General Conference
    • Address to the Priesthood Session
      • “So we have those in the Church, young men and young women, who wander away from the fold in perfectly legitimate ways. They are seeking success, success in business, success in their professions, and before long they become disinterested in Church and finally disconnected from the fold; they have lost track of what true success is, perhaps stupidly, perhaps unconsciously, in some cases, perhaps willingly. They are blind to what constitutes true success.”
      • “Youth who start out to indulge their appetites and passions are on the downward road to apostasy as sure as the sun rises in the east. I do not confine it to youth; any man or woman who starts out on that road of intemperance, of dissolute living will separate himself or herself from the fold as inevitably as darkness follows the day.”
      • “I wish I could say to every young man in this Church, that if you would be successful, if you would be happy, if you would conserve your strength, intellectual, physical, and spiritual, you will resist temptation to indulge your appetites and your passions. That is gospel truth—indulgence does not strengthen youth or manhood; restraint and self-control do. That is psychologically sound, because, instead of expending your energy as animals, self-control gives you more power and energy to expend intellectually and spiritually. Chastity strengthens manhood. It is the source of virility, not impotence; it is the crown of beautiful womanhood; and it is the source of peace and happiness in the home when you start to build it; it is the source of strength and perpetuity of the race.”
    • Marriage and Divorce
      • “In the light of scripture, ancient and modern, we are justified in concluding that Christ’s ideal pertaining to marriage is the unbroken home, and conditions that cause divorce are violations of his divine teachings. Some of these are:”
      • “Unfaithfulness on the part of either or both, habitual drunkenness, physical violence, long imprisonment that disgraces the wife and family, the union of an innocent girl to a reprobate—in these and perhaps other cases there may be circumstances which make the continuance of the marriage state a greater evil than divorce. But these are extreme cases—they are the mistakes, the calamities in the realm of marriage.”
      • “On the other hand, to look upon marriage as a mere contract that may be entered into at pleasure in response to a romantic whim, or for selfish purposes, and severed at the first difficulty or misunderstanding that may arise, is an evil meriting severe condemnation, especially in cases wherein children are made to suffer because of such separation.”
  • October 1944 General Conference
    • Will Nations Avert a World War III?
      • “Peace will come and be maintained only through the triumph of the principles of peace, and by the consequent subjugation of the enemies of peace, which are hatred, envy, ill-gotten gain, the exercise of unrighteous dominion of men. Yielding to these evils brings misery to the individual, unhappiness to the home, war among nations, with resultant misery and death.”
    • To the Leaders and Teachers
      • “The man who is honest with his God, in paying his tithes and offerings is usually honest with his fellow men. The man who speaks the truth is one who should be chosen to teach your children, and leaders in stakes and wards should be more careful than ever to see that the teachers in our auxiliaries and in our quorums are men who are true to themselves, to the Church, and to their God.”
  • April 1944 General Conference
    • To the Priesthood
      • “I might say the paramount duty of parents is to win and merit the confidence and respect of their children. Equally paramount in the life of a bishopric of a ward is to win and merit the confidence of the people of their ward. Too few parents have the confidence of their children. There are too few officers in the Church who have the confidence of the members, particularly of the young people of wards and stakes.”
    • The Resurrected Christ
      • “The Savior condemned hypocrisy and praised sincerity of purpose. Keep your heart pure and your actions will be in accord therewith. Social sins—lying, stealing, dishonest dealing, fornication, and the like are first committed in thought.”
    • To the Priesthood
      • “Let calmness be characteristic of our home life. If we do this, we shall be setting a proper example to the world.”
  • October 1943 General Conference
    • The Home Front
      • “Out of the homes of America go the future citizens of the republic. Upon properly ordered households and the uplifting moral atmosphere of home life depends more than upon any other phase of the social life the happiness of the human family. Home, not the state, is the natural protector of childhood. Parents more than teachers, more than officers of the law, are the molders of children’s moral natures.”
      • “Except in cases of infidelity or other extreme conditions, the Church frowns upon divorce, and authorities look with apprehension upon the increasing number of divorces among members of the Church. A man who has entered into a sacred covenant in the House of the Lord to remain true to the marriage vow is a traitor to that covenant if he separates himself from his wife and family just because he has permitted himself to become infatuated with a pretty face and comely form of some young girl who flattered him with a smile. Even though a loose interpretation of the law of the land would grant such a man a bill of divorcement, I think he is unworthy of a recommend to consummate his second marriage in the temple. A separation because of infidelity is another matter.”
      • “Instruct the youth of both sexes that the foundation of a happy home is laid during pre-marital days. Keep the spring of life pure by conforming their youthful lives to the single standard of morality. When that is done, the bride comes to the man she loves a stainless, priceless jewel. He in turn receives her not as a cheat, but as a man who can meet his bride on the high plane of moral integrity.”
  • April 1943 General Conference
    • Nobility of Character Essential to a Great Nation
      • “God has made America fruitful; man must make and keep the nation great.”
      • “The foundation of a noble character is integrity. By this virtue the strength of a nation, as of an individual, may be judged. No nation can ever become truly great, and win the confidence of other peoples, which to further its own selfish ends will, for example, consider an honorable treaty as “a mere scrap of paper.” No nation will become great whose trusted officers will pass legislation for personal gain, who will take advantage of a public office for personal preferment, or to gratify vain ambition, or who will, through forgery, chicanery, and fraud, rob the government or be false in office to a public trust.”
      • “Chastity, not indulgence, during the pre-marital years, is the source of harmony and happiness in the home, and the chief contributing factor to the health and perpetuity of the race. All the virtues that make up a beautiful character—loyalty, dependability, confidence, trust, love of God, and fidelity to man—are associated with this diadem in the crown of virtuous womanhood and of virile manhood.”
  • October 1942 General Conference
    • The Light that Shines in Darkness
      • “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
      • “Since rejection of Christ’s teachings has resulted in disaster and useless bloodshed, with only intermittent periods of respite and progress, why in the name of reason should people not be willing to substitute for selfish aggrandizement Christ’s principle of brotherly consideration? As a first step, for example, make truly applicable the simple injunction of putting one’s self in the other fellow’s place, the surest of all means of eliminating the bitterness that characterizes misunderstandings.”
  • April 1942 General Conference
    • The Church and the Present War
      • “War is basically selfish. Its roots feed in the soil of envy, hatred, desire for domination. Its fruit, therefore, is always bitter. They who cultivate and propagate it spread death and destruction, and are enemies of the human race.”
      • “War originates in the hearts of men who seek to despoil, to conquer, or to destroy other individuals or groups of individuals. Self exaltation is a motivating factor; force, the means of attainment. War is rebellious action against moral order.”
      • “To deprive an intelligent human being of his free agency is to commit the crime of the ages.”
  • October 1941 General Conference
    • Prospering in an Unsettled World
      • “I do not believe in the advocacy of discouragement and gloom; better, the gospel of Hope. Remember, the Church of Christ is established never more to be thrown down or given to another people. The Gospel has not yet been preached to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, and I am sure that the Lord will open up the way for the consummation of His purposes.”
  • April 1941 General Conference
    • The Kingdom of God
      • “The Kingdom of God implies also a universal brotherhood in which all men acknowledge God as their Supreme Ruler and cherish the desire to obey His divine will.”
      • “Cooperation and mutual helpfulness are virtues characteristic of the Church of Christ. Its watchwords are unity, efficiency, brotherhood—a brotherhood in which justice and mercy prompt the actions of all men.”
  • October 1940 General Conference
    • World in Upheaval
      • “Humanity is passing through one of its most crucial experiences. We are in the midst of a revolution both of thought and mode of life. Beliefs of parents are questioned, old ideals are in the discard. Communism, Naziism, Fascism, Totalitarianism are giving birth to new conceptions that strike relentlessly at beliefs and teachings which were accepted a decade ago as fundamentals and unassailable.”
      • “To climax these distracting conditions, war, with all its attendant horrors, is sweeping the earth as a devastating conflagration, leaving in its wake only ashes, agony, and death. Truly, the time has come as perhaps never before when men should counsel together, and in wisdom determine how the world may be made a better place in which to live.”
      • “Christianity and its handmaiden, Democracy, are now on trial before the world tribunal. The fact is, however, that conditions in this war-torn world instead of proving that Christianity has failed, emphatically bear witness that men are forever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth; or, as one man cynically remarked, “Men’s lives consist mostly in making the same mistakes over again.” Christianity, as summarized in the divine admonition, “Love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself” has never yet been accepted and practiced by the nations of the world. Were that principle even partly applied, our advanced scientific knowledge, our almost unlimited mechanized power, our unexcelled opportunities for education would be directed, not as now, for the destruction of human beings, but for the betterment of individuals, and for the advancement and redemption of mankind.”
      • “Man needs a re-dedication to the principles of unselfishness. No peace or freedom can come to this world so long as men live only for themselves. It is true that self-preservation is the first law of nature, but it is not a law of spiritual growth. He who lets selfishness and his passions rule him binds his soul in slavery, but he who, in the majesty of spiritual strength, uses his physical tendencies and yearnings, and his possessions to serve purposes higher than personal indulgence and comfort, takes the first step toward the happy and useful life.”
  • April 1940 General Conference
    • Associations
      • “Among life’s sweetest blessings is fellowship with men and women whose ideals and aspirations are high and noble. Next to a sense of a kinship with God comes the helpfulness, encouragement, and inspiration of friends. Friendship is a sacred possession.”
      • “It is well ever to keep in mind the fact that the State exists for the individual; not the individual for the State. Jesus sought to perfect society by perfecting the individual, and only by the exercising of Free Agency can the individual even approach perfection.”
      • “Latter-day Saints should avoid affiliation with any committee, any group, any union that would, through coercion or force, deprive a person of the free exercise of his or her freedom of choice. It is understood, of course, that any person is free to join a union, when to do so favors his best interests; but no one should be compelled to join, or be deprived of any right as a citizen, including the right to honest labor, if he chooses not to become a member of a union or specially organized group.”
  • October 1939 General Conference
    • Unity at Home
      • “I can imagine few if any things more objectionable in the home than the absence of unity and harmony. On the other hand, I know that a home in which unity, mutual helpfulness, and love abide is just a bit of heaven on earth.”
      • “The Church is little if at all injured by persecution and calumnies from ignorant, misinformed or malicious enemies; a greater hindrance to its progress comes from fault-finders, shirkers, commandment-breakers, and apostate cliques within its own ecclesiastical and quorum groups.”
  • April 1939 General Conference
    • An Easter Message
      • “Nearness to the event gives increased value to the evidence given by the apostles. A deeper value of their testimony lies in the fact that with Jesus’ death the Apostles were stricken with discouragement and gloom. For two and a half years they had been upheld and inspired by Christ’s presence. But now he was gone. They were left alone, and they seemed confused and helpless. Only John stood by the cross. Not with timidity, not with feelings of doubt, and gloom, and discouragement, is a skeptical world made to believe. Such wavering, despairing minds as the Apostles possessed on the day of the crucifixion could never have stirred people to accept an unpopular belief, and to die martyrs to the cause.”
      • “With this assurance, obedience to eternal law should be a joy, not a burden, for life is joy, life is love. It is disobedience that brings death. Obedience to Christ and his laws brings life. May each recurring Easter emphasize this truth, and fill our souls with the divine assurance that Christ is truly risen, and through him man’s immortality secured, and may the day soon dawn upon the world when the manifestations of brute force and false ideals that might makes right be supplanted by the charitable, peace-loving spirit of the Risen Lord!”
  • October 1938 General Conference
    • Peace the Message of the Church
      • “The future and permanency of the work is assured so long as the Priesthood will keep in mind the great mission of the Church. It is truly a messenger of peace. When Christ came to the earth his advent was heralded by an angelic chorus singing: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will toward men.” This message has been repeated so often that it seems trite, and, yet, if peace and brotherhood could even be approximated, it would prove the greatest boon that could come to humanity.”
      • “If the world would be at peace it must supplant the rule of force by the rule of love. The scriptures tell us that in the beginning Satan proffered to force all men into subjection to the will of God. By compulsion he would save every person, and for so doing he asked that the honor and the glory that are the Lord’s should be his. There is an example of dictatorship supreme!”
  • April 1938 General Conference
    • Work Brings Happiness
      • “The Church does not accept the doctrine that a mere murmured belief in Jesus Christ is all that is essential to salvation. A man may say he believes but if he does nothing to make that belief or faith a moving power to do, to accomplish, to produce soul growth, his protestation will avail him nothing.”
      • “Thousands, through no fault of theirs, are out of jobs, and are vainly seeking a means of an independent livelihood. However, failure to find it is no justification for idleness.”
      • “Work brings happiness, and that happiness is doubled to him who initiates the work.”
  • October 1937 General Conference
    • Applied Christianity
      • “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, accepting Christ as the revelation of God to man, believes that Jesus in his life and teachings reveals a standard of personal living, and of social relations, which, if fully embodied in individual lives and in human institutions, would not only ameliorate the present ills of society, but bring happiness and peace to mankind.”
      • “To every sincere follower of Christ religion should denote not only a sense of relationship to God, but also an expression of that feeling in actions with respect to right and wrong, and obligation to duty.”
  • April 1937 General Conference
    • Honor and Sustain the Law
      • “In a democracy in which the will of the people is sovereign, law is successfully operative only to the extent that the moral sense of the community is in sympathy with it.”
      • “The Article does not say we believe in submission to the law. Obedience implies a higher attitude than mere submission, for obedience has its root in good intent; submission may spring from selfishness or meanness of spirit. Though obedience and submission both imply restraint on one’s own will, we are obedient only from a sense of right; submissive from a sense of necessity.”
      • “America is a land of boasted liberty, but liberty may be either helpful or fatal according to the use made of it. Is it liberty when a group of men with threats of violence prevent an employer from entering his own property? No! Liberty is shackled and violence rules!”
      • “Liberty?—it is respect; liberty?—it is obedience to the inner law; and this law is neither the good pleasure of the mighty, nor the caprice of the crowd, but the high and impersonal rule before which those who govern are the first to bow the head. Shall liberty, then, be proscribed? No; but men must be made capable and worthy of it, otherwise public life becomes impossible, and the nation, undisciplined and unrestrained, goes on through license into the inextricable tangles of demagoguery.”
      • “It has been truly said that reverence is the noblest state in which a man can live in the world. If that is true, then irreverent man has a crudeness about him that is repellent. He is cynical, often sneering, and nearly always, iconoclastic.”
    • What Distinguishes the Church?
      • “If at this moment each one present were asked to state in one sentence or phrase the most distinguishing feature of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what would be your answer? It occurs to me now, that my answer would be this: Divine authority by direct revelation.”
  • October 1936 General Conference
    • Church Security Plan
      • “It is something to supply clothing to the scantily clad, to furnish ample food to those whose table is thinly spread, to give activity to those who are fighting desperately the despair that comes from enforced idleness, but after all is said and done, the greatest blessings that will accrue from the Church Security Plan are spiritual. Outwardly, every act seems to be directed toward the physical: re-making of dresses and suits of clothes, canning fruits and vegetables, storing foodstuffs, choosing of fertile fields for settlement—all seem strictly temporal, but permeating all these acts, inspiring and sanctifying them, is the element of spirituality.”
  • April 1936 General Conference
    • Happiness and Strength
      • “All mankind desire happiness. Many also strive sincerely to make the most and best of themselves. Surprisingly few, however, realize that a sure guide to such achievement may be found in the following declaration by Jesus of Nazareth: Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: And whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”
      • “It is a principle the application of which promises to supplant discouragement and gloom with hope and gladness; to fill life with contentment and peace everlasting. This being true its acceptance would indeed be a boon today to this distracted, depression-ridden world. Why, then, do men and nations ignore a thing so precious?”
    • Be of Good Courage
      • “We know with assurance that the Lord is keeping faith with his people; therefore, let none despair, but take courage and their hope shall not be in vain. Faith in God, trust, confidence in our fellowmen, the courage of our convictions, will enable us eventually to achieve any righteous cause. Courage is that quality of the mind which meets danger or opposition with calmness and firmness, which enables a man to face difficulties that lie in his pathway to righteous achievement.”
  • October 1935 General Conference
    • Unchanging Truth
      • “Recently I overheard some young men talking about the results of infractions of the moral law, and one of them expressed this sentiment: “I think we must take a broad view of this matter and look at these things in the light of the year 1935.” I cite his remark merely because I think it is the expression of an attitude which has more or less general acceptance. I answered him quietly: “If you put your finger in the fire will the burn be any less intense in 1935 than it was in 1835?” The law of compensation and the law of retribution are eternally operating.”
      • “There is an unchanging truth in an unchanging world, that should be an anchor to the soul of every person in it.”
      • “Only by obedience to his teachings can man find happiness and peace. Truly whosoever heareth his sayings and doeth them shall be likened unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house; but it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.”
  • April 1935 General Conference
    • Importance of Marriage
      • “Parenthood and particularly motherhood should be held as a sacred obligation. There is something in the depths of the human soul which revolts against neglectful parenthood.”
      • There are three fundamental things to which every child is entitled. First, a respected name; second, a sense of security; third, opportunities for development.”
      • “In teaching children, it should ever be kept in mind that “Behavior is caught, not taught.” Example is more potent than precept. Parents have the duty to be what they would have their children become in regard to courtesy, sincerity, temperance, and courage to do right at all times.”
  • October 1934 General Conference
    • Reflecting on a New Calling
      • “It is a wonderful thing to be trusted. I said last night to the brethren of the Priesthood that I agree with him who says that to be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. Love is the sweetest thing in the world, but to be trusted throws upon him who receives that trust an obligation that he must not fail to discharge.”
      • “And the Holy Ghost, to which each one who has obeyed the first principles of the Gospel is entitled will give him or her that heroic soul and bring peace, peace even in the midst of disaster.”
  • April 1934 General Conference
    • The Youth of the Church
      • “I realize that temptations were never stronger than they are today; but the young people who resist these temptations deserve all the greater credit. We hear about young boys and young girls who indulge in things contrary to the teachings of their parents and the officers of the Church, and contrary to the ideals of the Gospel, but we too seldom hear about the much larger group who are exerting an influence for good upon their fellow-workers and upon their associates.”
  • October 1933 General Conference
    • Worth of Souls
      • “We are living in an age of changing opinions, of swiftly shifting human relations. Man’s wisdom seems baffled. In all our readjustments, plans and policies we cannot do better than keep in mind the divine admonition that the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.”
      • “While emphasizing the worth of the individual, I wish to say that the individual in turn owes a duty to society. The world today perhaps as never before is demanding that the employer consider his employee not merely as a part of a machine to make money, but as a living, sensitive being entitled to justice and right. It is equally obligatory upon the employee to recognize the employer as one who has equal privileges. It is the duty of the citizen to take this same attitude toward the leaders of his government, and the duty of the churchman to recognize the rights of those appointed to preside.”
  • April 1933 General Conference
    • The 18th Amendment
      • “When the world war broke out many men cried, “Christianity has failed.” Just as they now cry, “Prohibition has failed.” Others answered then that Christianity had never been tried, that it was the violation of Christian principles that brought on the war. So we answer today: Prohibition has not failed, it has not been sufficiently tested. If public sentiment is against it, Prohibition cannot be enforced, but if the majority of people favor it, it can be enforced. Now we are engaged in the struggle to test that sentiment.”
  • October 1932 General Conference
    • Raising Up the Nation’s Youth
      • “It is estimated that about one-twelfth of a child’s time is spent in school, approximately one-third, or four-twelfths, spent in sleep. Varying amounts above the four-twelfths are spent daily in the home. Let us say roughly that about sixty per cent of the child’s time, during the eighteen years that we are considering now, is spent in the home, in sleep, and in school. That leaves forty per cent of a child’s life to be spent outside of these influences. I ask you guardians of the home what you are doing to direct the efforts of childhood during that forty per cent of his life in which he is left alone to be really himself.”
      • “You are not going to bring back erring youth unless you first let them know that you are interested in them. Let them feel your heart touch. Only the warm heart can kindle warmth in another. Wayward boys and girls are sometimes suspicious of people around them. Others get the idea that they are not wanted. The kind hand or the loving arm, removes suspicion and awakens confidence. Your own experience bears ample evidence of the value of personal companionship.”
  • April 1932 General Conference
    • Fasting
      • “You know there are occasionally men in the profession of teaching—as that is my profession I can speak plainly—who pride themselves on being iconoclasts; but unfortunately, when such teachers break their so-called images they supply nothing to replace them. They destroy ideals but offer no others, thus leaving the young boy in doubt and uncertainty.”
      • “As in eternal life, so in self-mastery, there is no one great thing which a man may do to obtain it; but there are many little things by observing which self-control may be achieved. And a subjecting of the appetite to the will and a refusal to satisfy desire are two of these little things.”
      • “If there were no other virtue in fasting but gaining strength of character, that alone would be sufficient justification for its universal acceptance.”
  • October 1931 General Conference
    • Anchored in Truth
      • “It is a wonderful thing to be anchored in the truth. When one is anchored to a testimony that God has spoken in this dispensation, that he has revealed his truth, there is little danger of one’s becoming moved from one’s place by any false theory, or any half truth, or any false accusation, that may be brought into his life. All such will affect one only as the waves affect immovable cliffs on the shore. But when one is not anchored then one becomes easily moved, at least unrestful and ill at ease. So it is necessary at all times to try the spirits, to make the test. Let the Church, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, be the measuring rod. When things do not harmonize with the truths of the Gospel we can pass them by, or at least hold them in abeyance until either their truth or falsity be established.”
      • “The source of slander may be found in a depraved nature. It is a weed the roots of which find richest sustenance in a soul that is seeking to destroy his fellows. In uncultured souls there is a desire to ride on the downfall of another—their souls feed on others’ failures.”
  • April 1931 General Conference
    • Feed My Lambs
      • “Some word of commendation, some gentle hand led you back into the path that has given you the success to which you have attained. Personal influence, we must not lose sight of it. That organization which can supply that personal influence with the least waste of effort, and with the highest degree of efficiency, is the most potent organization in the world.”
      • “God inspire us as we go from this Conference, to bring into the fold every child, every youth, and as far as possible, every man and woman, for there isn’t one who is not God’s child. And when we are thus working we are carrying out the great purpose of the Almighty, the very purpose for which he established his Church on earth, namely, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”
  • October 1930 General Conference
    • Changing Aristocracy
      • “Supplanting the aristocracy of birth has come the aristocracy of wealth. Money, it is said, can buy anything. Unquestionably one of the great factors that enter into the lawlessness following efforts to prohibit the sale and manufacture of liquor, is the great amount of profit that men find in that illicit traffic. If we can prevent the bootlegger from filling his purse we can better enforce the law against this liquor evil. And in passing let me urge every Latter-day Saint throughout the world to uphold the law against the sale, manufacture and transportation of intoxicants.”
  • April 1930 General Conference
    • How Is Man to be Governed
      • “Considered politically the world is upset at the present time in its opinion as to the best form of government. Wb are just witnessing the downfall of monarchies. Rising from these monarchial ruins have come democracy as exemplified chiefly in Great Britain in her dominions and in the United States ; the dictatorship of the proleteriat as in Soviet Russia; and the Fascist regime in Italy, with Mussolini as chief dictator. It is apparent that men are seeking for a better form of government than most nations now have. Will they find it in the government by a dictator or in the government by the people, or in a combination of both?”
      • “Brethren, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has in it all that the world would require. I am not associating political government with our religious government; I am merely pointing out that system of organization established by the revelations of God to man.”
      • “Let me conclude: The Church, established by divine inspiration to an unlearned youth, offers to the world the solution of all its social problems. It has stood the test of the first century successfully. In the midst of brilliant concepts of men in this twentieth century, who seek conscientiously for social reforms and who peer blindly into the future to read the destiny of man, the Church shines forth as the sun in the heavens, around which other luminaries revolve as satellites of minor importance. Truly it is the creator and preserver of man’s highest values. Its real task, the redemption of our human world.”
  • October 1929 General Conference
    • The Sacrament
      • “The sacrament is a memorial of Christ’s life and death. When we think of his life we think of sacrifice. Not a moment of his existence on earth did Christ think more of himself than he did of his brethren and the people whom he came to save, always losing himself for the good of others, and finally giving his life for the redemption of mankind. When we partake of the sacrament in his presence we remember him, his life of sacrifice, and service; and we are inspired by that thought and memory. There is nothing won in this life without sacrifice. I am thrilled when I study carefully any principle of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and find that it is part of the whole, or rather that it comprehends the whole. Truly, truth is the sum of existence. So we can associate this sacrament, with all truth, all life. It is all-comprehensive. No thing worth while is obtained in this life without sacrificing, without putting forth effort.”
      • “No man can be dishonest within himself without deadening the susceptibility of his spirit. Sin can stun the conscience as a blow on the head can stun the physical senses. He who promises one thing and deliberately fails to keep his word, adds sin to sin.”
  • April 1929 General Conference
    • True Religion
      • “True religion has three manifestations; first, the thought, the feeling, the mental and spiritual attitude of the individual toward his God; second, worship; and third, service to one’s fellows. Evidently a man may conform to the outward forms of worship yet not be religious. But a man must be religious if he direct his thoughts and his words towards God and let his worship and acts among his fellows follow in accordance therewith.”
      • “Let us not make Sunday a holiday. It is a holy day, and on that day we should go to the house of worship and seek our God. If we seek him on the Sabbath day, get into his presence on that day, we shall find it less difficult to be in his presence the following days of the week. There should be more reverence for the house of worship.”
  • October 1928 General Conference
    • Keep the Faith
      • “To keep the faith means also to accept the fact that the Savior, a resurrected personal being, has appeared in this dispensation and restored the authority to men to preach in his name, and to officiate in things pertaining to God.”
  • April 1928 General Conference
    • Education in Character
      • “There are parents in the world—I hope there are very few in the Church—who say they will leave the educating of their children in religious matters until the children themselves arrive at years of accountability. They will permit their children to choose which Church or which principles of religion the children desire to accept. The Prophet Joseph gives no intimation that any parent has a right thus to leave the religious training of his children until they arrive at the years of accountability.”
  • October 1927 General Conference
    • Integrity
      • “Integrity is the first step to true greatness. Men love to praise, but are slow to practice, integrity. To maintain it in high places costs self-denial. In all places it is liable to opposition, but its end is glorious, and the universe will yet do it homage.”
  • April 1927 General Conference
    • To Make Christians of the World
      • “Some Protestant ministers do not like to consider “Mormons” Christians. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the paramount desire in every Latter-day Saint’s heart is to make all people Christians.”
      • “Brethren, it is a wonderful school to which we send our young men and women—the best in all the world. I weigh that sentence carefully— the best school in all the world! But it must never be considered a reform school for those who are the instructors therein. Keep young men who need reforming at home until they attain that degree of leadership which this Church requires.”
  • October 1926 General Conference
    • Word of Wisdom
      • “Just because a man has developed the habit is no justification for his continuing it. Just because some men may become immune (granting this man’s argument), from the ill effects, that is no justification for its use in the priesthood of God.”
  • April 1926 General Conference
    • Witnesses
      • “So, the Latter-day Saints declare to the world that God is a personal God, not just a power, and force, he is that and more. He is all that because of his divine and eternal personality, and the Church stands on the reality of the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
  • October 1925 General Conference
    • Witnesses
      • “There is a witness of the Spirit. God does reveal today to the human soul the reality of the resurrection of the Lord, the divinity of this great work, the truth, the divine and eternal truth, that God lives, not as a power, an essence, a force, as electricity, but as our Father in heaven. Oh, why do men try to make that power, recognized by science and religion everywhere, a mere force. I sometimes wish that such men would kneel down and try to pray to electricity. Imagine trying to pray to electricity! You can’t do it, and yet that is one of the greatest known forces. You can, however, pray to God the Father, a personal being. God reveals to the soul his existence. He reveals the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to earth to give to men the great reality of the existence of God and his Son; and in that spirit and with such witness in my soul I bear testimony today that Jesus Christ is the Redeemer of the world.”
  • April 1925 General Conference
    • Missionaries in Europe
      • “Why should anyone condemn the missionaries who are out preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ without price, paying their own expenses for teaching to the world the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and bearing witness in kindness and love, that our Father has appeared to man, that his Son Jesus Christ has been raised from the tomb and now lives, bearing witness to the word of the immortality of the soul? Who should vilify people for standing on that sublime ground?”
  • October 1922 General Conference
    • Light of the World
      • “If you ask me where I first received my unwavering faith in the existence of a God, I would answer you: in the home of my childhood—when father and mother invariably called their children around them in the morning and at night, and invoked God’s blessing upon the household and upon mankind. There was a sincerity in that good patriarch’s voice that left an undying impression in the children’s souls; and mother’s prayers were equally impressive.”
  • April 1922 General Conference
    • A Mission Around the World
      • “The Buddhist utterly rejects the belief in a personal God. So do many in the Christian world. In opposition to this false conception of God, I wish to declare that today I feel as I have never felt before in all my life that God is my Father. He is not just an intangible power, a moral force in the world, but a personal God with creative powers, the Governor of the world, the Director of our souls. I would like to have the young men of Israel feel so close to Him that they will approach Him daily, not in public alone, but in private.”
      • “The young man who closes the door behind him, who draws the curtains, and there in silence prepares to plead with God for help, should first pour out his soul in gratitude for health, for friends, for loved ones, for the gospel, for the manifestations of God’s existence, as seen in the rocks and the trees and the stones and the flowers, and all things about him. He should first count his many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise him what the Lord has done.”
      • “I cannot think that a Latter-day Saint will hold enmity in his heart if he will sincerely, in secret, pray God to remove from his heart all feelings of envy and malice toward any of his fellowmen.”
  • October 1920 General Conference
    • Teach the Children
      • “Many of them will turn aside when you say you are going to preach to them. I do not always blame them. I believe that too many of us stand on the side, as it were, and call to them to come back without ever entering into their lives.”
      • “They fail to distinguish between the carnal pleasures and those which are intellectual and spiritual. I am not going to ask them not to have a good time. I think they should have a good time. Young men and young women are entitled to it; all men and all women are entitled to it. We are all here to enjoy life in its fullest and most complete sense; but the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is this: that to live one must live in obedience to law, physical lam, intellectual law, spiritual law. Transgression of law always brings unhappiness, it always brings death when carried to the ultimate end.”
      • “One of the most disintegrating influences today is that feeling that is creeping in amongst some of our young boys and young girls that they can violate the law of chastity with impunity. The law of the land may not reach them—they may avoid that. Their bishops may not detect their transgression. But God can. And deep down in their own souls they know that they have lost part of their life. They have lived as the Epicure would live, for the moment, and they have no peace. Their souls are turbulent. Why? Because they have stained the character of another, they have stained their own souls eternally. No one can transgress the laws of chastity and find peace. That is the message to our boys, to our girls. No matter what the opportunity, no matter what the temptation, let the young man of Israel know that to find happiness he must hold sacred his true manhood, let him know that he is going to live and live completely by refusing to yield to that temptation. Then he is happy; he is happy. There is peace instead of turbulency in his soul.”
  • April 1920 General Conference
    • An Ensign to the Nations
      • “If we make the claim to hold the truth it is obligatory upon every Latter-day Saint so to live, that when the world comes, in answer to the call, to test the fruit of the tree, it will find it wholesome and good.”
  • October 1919 General Conference
    • Has Christianity Failed?
      • “The men who desire to wring from the poor that which does not belong to them, are not prompted by Christian principles. The men who are revengeful against others simply because others have property, are not prompted by Christian principles, and today it is our duty to preach Christ and him crucified and to declare to all the world that he is indeed the chief cornerstone, that through him, and by him, and only by obedience to his principles, can we have that peace, happiness, contentment and prosperity in the world for which we are all longing and praying.”
    • To the Youth
      • “I think nothing in this world can give such consolation, such peace, to fathers and mothers, as to realize the fact that their boys and girls have faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
      • “Happiness is found only along that well beaten track, narrow as it is, though straight, which leads to life eternal.”
      • “The Lord never forsakes those who seek him. I add my testimony to that which has been given. Never. It may not come just the way you think, but it will come. The Lord will certainly fulfil his promise to you.”
  • June 1919 General Conference
    • Home Builders
      • “There is nothing temporary in the home of the Latter-day Saint. There is no element of transitoriness in the family relationship of the Latter-day Saint home. That all such ties are eternal should be maintained.”
  • October 1918 General Conference
    • The Meaning of the Church of Christ
      • “Oh, boys of Zion, can’t you see what the nations need? Will you set an example? God help us to tell them that the hour of his judgment is come. God has spoken. The day of Israel is here, and the comings of the Son of Man is not far off. How many years it matters not. It is near by. We must do our part and prepare for it.”
    • Ideals and Character Building
      • “I never heard one of our brethren bear testimony to the divinity of this work, without feeling that the strength and growth of his character depends upon a consistent life with that testimony; and it makes character to live in harmony with man’s ideals, or at least to strive to live in harmony with them.”
  • April 1918 General Conference
    • Nations Must Accept the Truth
      • “I will tell you, brethren, the time has come when not only individuals but nations must accept this truth. They must be guided in their national and international dealings by the principles of everlasting truth and justice. The nation that started the terrible war now raging, started it because it ignored the principles of Christ.”
  • October 1917 General Conference
    • Families and Homes
      • “Let us teach the youth, then that the marriage relation is one of the most sacred obligations known to man, or that man can make. Teach them that the family is the first institution ordained of God, and instituted among men. If every couple sensed the sacredness of this obligation, there would be fewer homes broken up by disagreements that lead to divorces. The safety, the perpetuity of our government, or of any republican form of government, depends upon the safety and permanency of the home.”
      • “The gospel of Jesus Christ should radiate in every home; that the prayer night and morning should be offered up in sincerity; that the children daily would realize that we desire in our home the presence of God. If we can invite the Savior there, we may know that the angels will be not only willing but eager to protect our boys and girls.”
  • April 1917 General Conference
    • God is Love
      • “I am not one of those who see in this world catastrophe the hand of God as its cause. I do not believe that God has caused the misery, the famine, the pestilence, and the death that are now sweeping the war-torn countries of Europe. I do believe that the conditions of the world today are a direct result—an inevitable result, of disobedience to God’s laws.”
      • “God has not left his children without the light. He has given them in the various dispensations of the world the light of the gospel wherein they could walk and not stumble, wherein they could find that peace and happiness which he desires, as a loving Father, his children should enjoy, but the Lord does not take from them their free agency.”
  • October 1916 General Conference
    • Teaching the Gospel
      • “Does that testimony radiate from your being when you enter into the home? If so, that radiation will give life to the people whom you go to teach. If not, there will be a dearth, a drouth, a lack of that spiritual environment in which the Saints grow.”
    • The Power of the Holy Ghost
      • “The power that is guiding that young man, today, and thousands of others throughout the world, in the mission field, and here at home, is the power of the Holy Ghost, which comes to those who accept the principles and ordinances of the gospel, administered by men divinely appointed in things pertaining to God.”
      • “It is our duty, my fellow workers, to prove to the world, by our acts, that God acknowledges this Church as his, and is willing to bestow his Spirit upon those who diligently serve him.”
  • October 1915 General Conference
    • The Key to Eternal Life
      • “Life eternal is what I desire. I desire it more than I desire anything else in the world—life eternal for me and mine and all the world. And there in the words of the Redeemer I have the secret given to me in a simple sentence, To know God and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent, is eternal life.”
  • April 1915 General Conference
    • Mutual Aid
      • “Each individual should studiously practice self-control. It does not come all at once. Nature never makes cash payments as a whole. Her payments are always made in small installments. Those who desire to have self-mastery must do it by constant application.”
  • October 1914 General Conference
    • Live the Law
      • “There is no one great thing that we can do to obtain eternal life, and it seems to me that the great lesson to be learned in the world today is to apply in the little acts and duties of life the glorious principles of the Gospel. Let us not think that because some of the things named this afternoon may seem small and trivial, that they are unimportant. Life, after all, is made up of little things.”
  • April 1914 General Conference
    • A Religion Worth Having
      • “I am grateful for membership in a church whose religion fits men for the struggle with the forces of the world, and which enables them to survive in this struggle.”
  • October 1913 General Conference
    • Treasures of Truth
      • “Love pretended has no influence. Love unfeigned always has the power to reach the heart.”
  • October 1912 General Conference
    • Testimony and Obedience
      • “The Latter-day Saints throughout the world find confirmation of their testimony in every performance of duty. They know that the gospel teaches them to be better individuals; that obedience to the principles of the gospel makes them stronger men, and truer women. Every day such knowledge comes to them, and they cannot gainsay it; they know that obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ makes them better and truer husbands, true and honored wives, obedient children.”
  • April 1912 General Conference
    • Simple Faith
      • “God help us to go forth from this conference imbued with the Spirit of the Lord, that every man and woman who has an opportunity to work in the Church—and that means all—may be determined to live a life of virtue and purity that will command the strength of the world, and the admiration of it. In short, let us provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, so far as in us lies, let us live peaceably with all men—not overcoming evil by evil, or being overcome by evil, but overcoming evil with good.”
  • October 1911 General Conference
    • Individual Righteousness
      • “The test, after all, of the efficiency of God’s people is an individual one. What is the individual doing?”
      • “Zion is the pure in heart, we have been told, and the strength of this Church lies in the purity of the thoughts and lives of its members, then the testimony of Jesus abides in the soul, and strength comes to each individual to withstand the evils of the world.”
      • “When that little small voice calls to the performance of duty, insignificant though it seem, and its performance unknown to any one save the individual and God, he who responds gains corresponding strength. Temptation often comes in the same quiet way. Perhaps the yielding to it may not be known by any one save the individual and his God, but if he does yield to it, he becomes to that extent weakened, and spotted with the evil of the world.”
      • “A corporation can afford to lose that nickel, but we cannot afford to take it, to steal it. It is an insignificant thing, isn’t it? It is really a great thing, it is one of these insidious things stealing into the character of the individual.”
  • April 1911 General Conference
    • Meaning of God’s Word
      • “Those eternal truths, so tersely expressed, we accept as true. We may not live up to them wholly, but as a people we accept them, because they are the word of God.”
  • October 1910 General Conference
    • A Testimony of the Truth
      • “Men have called Him an enthusiast; they have accused Him of being a dreamer, an ascetic, a recluse, and other such epithets have they hurled at Him, but they are loath ever to say that Christ, the Redeemer, was dishonest or untrue. His life is a life of honesty, honor, uprightness. He was drawn to men who were honest themselves, whose hearts were pure and guileless.”
  • April 1910 General Conference
    • Proclaim the Gospel
      • “We cannot speak well of the state unless we speak well of the men who have founded the state.”
      • “Let us speak well of those within our Church. Brethren and sisters. Christians have the responsibility of giving good news to the world—not bad news.”
      • “The Gospel is our anchor. We know what it stands for. If we live it, feel it, and speak well of the Gospel, of the Priesthood, of the authorities in it, speak well even of our enemies, we shall feel happier ourselves, and we shall be preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
  • October 1909 General Conference
    • Doing
      • “Take your sons with you along this road of life, that you may have them with you in that eternal home where there is everlasting peace and contentment.”
      • “Work! O how often do we read in the scriptures about the blessings that come from doing.”
  • April 1909 General Conference
    • Builders and Murmurers
      • “From its inception the Church has belonged to the class of benefactors. The members of this Church have been builders, but all the while they have had to contend with the class of malefactors, the murmurers against God and against His word as delivered to the world through His servants.”
      • “Many thousands have left their houses of adobe and have come into the mansion of the Gospel, because they saw that it was better. But the Church does not tear down the houses of others, before erecting one that is more commodious and more beautiful, in the Church of Christ.”
      • “Go into the homes of true Latter-day Saints, and there see if the most substantial part of the nation—the home—is not the best that can be found. The family tie is an eternal one; it is not one of experiment; it is not one of satisfying passion; it is an eternal union between husband and wife; between parents and children. That eternal bond is one that must be held sacred by the man as well as by the woman.”
      • “Men become murmurers or fighters against this Church, for one of two reasons; either through sin—for sin hates truth and virtue—or through ignorance. There are many people in the world who condemn us because they are ignorant of the real facts concerning the Church of Christ.”
      • “This warning is sometimes expressed in this way: “Speak not against the authorities.” What does it mean. Be not a murmurer; that is what it means. It is one of the most poisonous things that can be introduced into the home of a Latter-day Saint—this murmuring against presidents of stakes, high councilors, Sunday school superintendents, presidents of high-priests’ quorums, seventies, elders, priests, teachers and deacons. They are called unto their position, what for? To benefit themselves? No, not once can you point to an instance in this Church where a man was called for his personal benefit. He was admonished, before he was called to the position, whatever it was, that he should serve somewhere and serve somebody in this Church or in the world; it was to bless somebody, some class, humanity at large. That is the mission of every man, from the president of the Church down to the latest convert in the Church.”
      • “When a man begins to tear down, revile and persecute, he is doing that which injures instead of building up. Our mission should be to build.”
  • October 1908 General Conference
    • Be Honest, Be True
      • “A dishonest man brings only misery into the world.”
      • “Let me digress here a moment to say that the element of greatness all through these men I have named is sincerity, true consistency. A sincere man who sits down at night and pens that which his soul believes to be right, that which his soul tells him will be good for humanity, is exercising a power over the world that is beneficial. We should hail that expression of greatness, of goodness, with thanksgiving. But the insincere man, the man who will sit down at night and distort facts, who will wilfully misrepresent truth, who is a traitor to the divine within him which is calling, nay longing for truth, what shall we say of that man? He is publishing falsehoods to the world, giving poison to young, innocent souls who are longing for truth. Oh, there is no condemnation too strong for the hypocrite, for the betrayer of Christ. We will not condemn him, but God will, in His justice; He must.”
      • “There is inconsistency in a man’s kneeling down with his family in prayer, and asking God to bless the leader of our Church, and then put into the hands of the boy, who was kneeling there, a paper that calls the leader a hypocrite. It ought not to be done; it is poison to the soul.”
      • “Teach your children, your boys and girls everywhere, to keep away from every bad book and all bad literature, especially that which savors of hatred, or envv, or malice, that which bears upon it the marks of hypocrisy, insincerity, edited by men who have lost their manhood.”
  • April 1908 General Conference
    • Choose This Day
      • “One of the greatest benefits derived from meeting together, is the experiencing of new and beautiful thoughfs and feelings. These thoughts and feelings are not always those expressed by the speaker. Words do not convey thought —they only call up thought; but those who, while listening, experience new thoughts, or noble feelings, always derive one of the greatest blessings that come to those who meet together.”
      • “We must choose whom we will serve. I say we cannot go on serving, part of the time, the enemy, and part of the time, the Church. We cannot do this.”
  • October 1907 General Conference
    • Spiritual Disease and Truth
      • “If we are true within, if our souls are unimpaired, if we remain steadfast to the integrity of our lives, to the Gospel, we are just as pure, and as strong, and as rich in the eyes of God, who sees the heart and judges therefrom.”
      • “The peril of this century is spiritual apathy. As the body requires sunlight, good food, proper exercise and rest, so the spirit of man requires the sunlight of the Holy Spirit; proper exercise of the spiritual functions; the avoiding of evils that affect spiritual health, that are more ravaging in their effects than typhoid fever, pneumonia, or other diseases that attack the body. These diseases may stop the manifestations of life in the body, but the spirit still lives. When disease of the spirit conquers, the life dies eternally. Such an extreme spiritual disease would, of necessity, be an unpardonable sin. When men get spiritually sick, they do not care much for religion. They think it not necessary for them to attend to their spiritual wants. Dissatisfied with themselves, they find fault with those who do enjoy the true life of spirituality. Why? Because they don’t know what real spiritual life is.”
      • “The man who hates his brother, and kneels down for prayer with that hate in his heart, has in his spirit a disease which will impair his spiritual life.”
      • “No matter what they may be without, are your homes pure within? Are morning prayers offered there regularly? Or do the things of this world take you away from your homes and make you deprive yourself of morning prayers with the children?”
  • April 1907 General Conference
    • Resist Evil
      • “It is implied therein that the Latter-day Saints are members of the Church “for the fostering of spiritual life, and the achievement of moral and charitable ends;” in other words, for the developing of the religious sentiment, the true religious spirit. This may be done in two ways: first, by seeking the truth and living in harmony with it; and second, by resisting every influence, every power that tends to destroy or to dwarf in any way the religious sentiment. When the Latter-day Saint stood at the water’s edge, before being buried with Christ in baptism, he had within him an implicit faith that the Church of Christ is established upon the earth, and that this organization is the best in the world today for the fostering of spiritual life, for the attaining of true religious development, for the salvation of his soul. I repeat that this implicit faith was within him; and with that, there was a true repentance, and that repentance carried with it a desire to leave off everything in the past life that was contrary to the teachings of the Gospel or the Church he was about to join. His old life, and the sins, if there were any connected with it, he truly repented of. He looked forward to the time when he would be born anew in the Kingdom of God.”
      • “May God grant that as we are seeking the further establishment of the Kingdom of God, that we may instruct our young people, and the members of the Church everywhere, to resist the temptations that weaken the body, that destroy the soul, that we may stand truly repentant as we were when we entered the waters of baptism, that we may be renewed in the true sense of the word, that we may be born again, that our souls might bask in the light of the Holy Spirit, and go on as true members of the Church of Christ, until our mission on earth is completed, and God receives us and rewards us according; to our merits.”
  • October 1906 General Conference
    • Loyal and True
      • “Probably you more strongly appreciate than ever before that this Church organization depends upon all the people, not upon just a few; and that those members who fail to carry their share of responsibility are not wholly true to their brethren.”
      • “As members of the Church in conference assembled, I believe that we ought to go home determined to carry out the responsibility that is upon us, not merely because these brethren have urged us to do so, but because we have it in our souls to do it.”
      • “Reason alone is not a sufficient guide in searching for truth.”
      • “Every time we have opportunity and fail to live up to that truth which is within us, every time we fail to express a good thought, every time we fail to perform a good act, we weaken ourselves, and make it more difficult to express that thought or perform that act in the future. Every time we perform a good act, every time we express a noble feeling we make it the more easy to perform that act or express that feeling another time.”

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