Mormon Quotes

America

Brigham Young
In the days of Joseph [Smith] it was considered a great privilege to be permitted to speak to a member of Congress, but twenty‑six years will not pass away before the Elders of this Church will be as much thought of as the kings on their thrones.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 4:40
Brigham Young
To check the increase of our race has its advocates among the influential and powerful circles of society in our nation and in other nations. The same practice existed forty‑five years ago, and various devices were used by married persons to prevent the expenses and responsibilities of a family of children, which they must have incurred had they suffered nature's laws to rule pre‑eminent. That which was practised then in fear and against reproving conscience, is now boldly trumpeted abroad as one of the best means of ameliorating the miseries and sorrows of humanity. Infanticide is very prevalent in our nation. It is a crime that comes within the purview of the law, and is therefore not so boldly practised as is the other equally great crime, which, no doubt, to a great extent, prevents the necessity of infanticide. The unnatural style of living, the extensive use of narcotics, the attempts to destroy and dry up the fountains of life, are fast destroying the American element of the nation; it is passing away before the increase of the more healthy, robust, honest, and less sinful class of the people which are pouring into the country daily from the Old World. The wife of the servant man is the mother of eight or ten healthy children, while the wife of his master is the mother of one or two poor, sickly children, devoid of vitality and constitution, and, if daughters, unfit, in their turn, to be mothers, and the health and vitality which nature has denied them through the irregularities of their parents are not repaired in the least by their education.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 12:120
Brigham Young
I can tell all the world that we mean to sustain the Constitution of the United States and all righteous laws. We are not by any means treasoners, secessionists, or abolitionists. We are neither negro‑drivers nor negro‑worshippers. We belong to the family of heaven, and we intend to walk over every unrighteous and unholy principle, and view everybody and everything as it is before God, and put everything in its place.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 9:29
Brigham Young
It is not the prerogative of the President of the United States to meddle with this matter, and Congress is not allowed, according to the [p.40] Constitution, to legislate upon it. If Utah was admitted into the Union as a sovereign State, and we chose to introduce slavery here, it is not their business to meddle with it; and even if we treated our slaves in an oppressive manner, it is still none of their business and they ought not to meddle with it.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 4:39
Brigham Young
I am at the defiance of the rulers of the greatest nation on the earth, with the United States all put together, to produce a more loyal people than the Latter‑day Saints.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 1:361
Joseph Smith
I prophesy in the name of the Lord God of Israel, unless the United States redress the wrongs committed upon the Saints in the state of Missouri and punish the crimes committed by her officers that in a few years the government will be utterly overthrown and wasted, and there will not be so much as a potsherd left for their wickedness.
Joseph Smith, History of the Church, v5, p 394
Joseph Smith
While discussing the petition to Congress, I prophesied, by virtue of the holy Priesthood vested in me, and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that, if Congress will not hear our petition and grant us protection, they shall be broken up as a government, and god shall damn them. And there shall nothing be left of them ‑ not even a grease spot.
Joseph Smith, History of the Church, v.6 p. 116
Joseph Smith
I am prepared to say by the authority of Jesus Christ, that not many years shall pass away before the United States shall present such a scene of bloodshed as has not a parallel in the history of our nation.
Joseph Smith, letter to N.E. Seaton, January 4, 1833, in History of the Church, v. 1, p. 315
Joseph Smith
But meddle not with any man for his religion: all governments ought to permit every man to enjoy his religion unmolested. No man is authorized to take away life in consequence of difference of religion, which all laws and governments ought to tolerate and protect, right or wrong. Every man has a natural, and, in our country, a constitutional right to be a false prophet, as well as a true prophet. If I show, verily, that I have the truth of God, and show that ninety-nine out of every hundred professing religious ministers are false teachers, having no authority, while they pretend to hold the keys of God's kingdom on earth, and was to kill them because they are false teachers, it would deluge the whole world with blood.
Joseph Smith, History of the Church 6:304
Joseph Smith
I do not believe that the people of the North have any more right to say that the South shall not hold slaves, than the South have to say the North shall.... the first mention we have of slavery is found in the Holy Bible.... And so far from that prediction being averse to the mind of God, it [slavery] remains as a lasting monument of the decree of Jehovah, to the shame and confusion of all who have cried out against the South, in consequence of their holding the sons of Ham in servitude.
Joseph Smith, History of the Church, v. 2, p. 438
John Taylor
The higher law, of which those parties speak, refers particularly to the liberation of the negro, wherein they conceive that that is paramount to everything else, and that to it all barriers and obstacles, whether of constitution or law, shall give way; but that is a question which I shall not discuss here this afternoon, but leave it to other parties.
John Taylor, Journal of Discourses 11:9
John Taylor
The [anti‑slavery] Republicans, you know, in the States, have been very fond for a long time of talking about a higher law of some kind. We, too, have a higher law, not a negro law particularly, but a law that emanates from God; a law that is calculated to promote the best interests and the happiness of this people, and of the world when they will listen to it.
John Taylor, Journal of Discourses 11:49
Wilford Woodruff
I will here say, before closing, that two weeks before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, "You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God." There were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights. I thought it very singular, that notwithstanding so much work had been done, and yet nothing had been done for them. The thought never entered my heart, from the fact, I suppose, that heretofore our minds were reaching after our more immediate friends and relatives. I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon brother McCallister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others; I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them.
Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses 19:229
Wilford Woodruff
The American Nation will be broken in pieces.... you live in the day and hour of the judgments of God Almighty.... the hour of God's judgment is at the door.... I wish to warn all nations.... Thrones will be cast down, nations will be overturned, anarchy will reign, all legal barriers will be broken down, and the laws will be trampled in the dust. You are about to be visited with war, sword, famine, pestilence, plague, earthquakes, whirlwinds, tempests, and with the flame of devouring fire.... the slain of the Lord will be many.
Wilford Woodruff, Millennial Star, v. 41, p. 241
Wilford Woodruff
I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon Brother McCallister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others; I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them.
Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses 19:229
David O. McKay
True motherhood is the noblest call of the world, and we look with sorrow upon the practice here in our own United States of limiting families, a tendency creeping into our own Church.
David O. McKay, Prophet David O. McKay, Church News, June 11, 1952
David O. McKay
It is part of our "Mormon" theology that the Constitution of the United States was divinely inspired; that our Republic came into existence through wise men raised up for that very purpose. We believe it is the duty of the members of the Church to see that this Republic is not subverted either by any sudden or constant erosion of those principles which gave this Nation its birth.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
David O. McKay
In these days when there is a special trend among certain groups, including members of faculties of universities, to challenge the principles upon which our country has been founded and the philosophy of our Founding Fathers, I hope that Brigham Young University will stand as a bulwark in support of the principles of government as vouchsafed to us by our Constitutional Fathers.
David O. McKay, Letter from President David O. McKay to Ernest L. Wilkinson and the BYU Faculty
Ezra Taft Benson
It was boldly begun here in 1933 (November 16), when the United States announced our diplomatic recognition of atheistic Soviet Russia. For 15 years the United States had refused to recognize the godless Moscow Communists, for the reasons published at length in 1920 by Bainbridge Colby, Secretary of State in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. In concluding his long letter of documentation and explanation, Colby had said this: "There cannot be any common ground upon which the Government of the United States can stand with a power whose conceptions are so entirely alien to our own, so utterly repugnant to our moral sense."
Ezra Taft Benson, Godless Forces Threaten Us (Ezra Taft Benson, 1969 Semi‑Annual General Conference, Improvement Era)
Ezra Taft Benson
This recognition, together with the abandonment of the inspired Monroe Doctrine, gave the Red atheists a big diplomatic sanctuary for the coordination and direction of their propagandist spies and saboteurs. These promptly infiltrated every branch of our federal government and later every segment of our economy, and more recently have established a godless base 90 miles from our shores. Our recognition broke the ice of American resistance to the acceptance of the Kremlin gangsters into the international community as a legitimate government and so strengthened their iron grip upon the tortured people of Russia and her satellites.
Ezra Taft Benson, Godless Forces Threaten Us (Ezra Taft Benson, 1969 Semi‑Annual General Conference, Improvement Era)
Ezra Taft Benson
When socialism is understood, we will realize that many of the programs advocated, and some of those already adopted in the United States, fall clearly within the category of socialism.
Ezra Taft Benson, The American Heritage of Freedom—A Plan of God (Ezra Taft Benson, 1961 Semi‑Annual General Conference, Improvement Era)
Gordon B. Hinckley
In 1933, there was a movement in the United States to overturn the law which prohibited commerce in alcoholic beverages. When it came to a vote, Utah was the deciding state. President Heber J. Grant, then President of this Church, had pleaded with our people against voting to nullify Prohibition. It broke his heart when so many members of the Church in this state disregarded his counsel. How grateful, my brethren, I feel, how profoundly grateful for the tremendous faith of so many Latter‑day Saints who, when facing a major decision on which the Church has taken a stand, align themselves with that position.
Gordon B. Hinckley, April 2003 General Conference, "Loyalty"
Mark E. Petersen
Is there reason then why the type of birth we receive in this life is not a reflection of our worthiness or lack of it in the pre‑existent life? We must accept the justice of God. He is fair to all. With that in mind, we can account in no other way for the birth of some of the children of God in darkest Africa, or in flood‑ridden China, or among the starving hordes of India, while some of the rest of us are born in the United States? We cannot escape the conclusion that because of performance in our pre‑existence some of us are born as Chinese, some as Japanese, some as Indians, some as Negroes, some as Americans, some as Latter‑day Saints. There are rewards and punishments, fully in harmony with His established policy in dealing with sinners and saints, rewarding all according to their deeds.
Mark E. Petersen, Race Problems as they Affect the Church
Orson Pratt
This great war [Civil War] is only a small degree of chastisement, just the beginning; nothing compared to that which God has spoken concerning this nation, if they will not repent.
Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 12:244
Orson Pratt
For the Lord has said in this book, (the Book of Mormon) which has been published for thirty eight years, that if they will not repent He will throw down all [the United States] strongholds and cut off the cities of the land, and will execute vengeance and fury on the nation, even as upon the heathen, such as they have not heard. That He will send a desolating scourge on the land; that He will leave their cities desolate, without inhabitants.
Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 12:244
Orson Pratt
They have not yet passed a law forbidding the Chinaman from emigrating to this country. Have the Latter‑day Saints sunk down so far beneath heathenism, that we must have the gate shut down upon us, and heathens by tens of thousands come swarming to our land? I do not, I cannot believe that the good sense of the American people can tolerate such persecution.
Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 20:42
Orson Pratt
The time is coming, when we will not be fettered by unjust laws that are imposed upon us. Why? Because the Lord intends, by his judgment, by wars among the nations that will not serve him, by famines, and pestilence, and by various judgments that will be sent forth, to waste away the nations of the earth.... we know their doom, and we know that it is very near at hand. It is not something to happen in a far distant period of the future, but it is right at the doors.... he will speedily fulfill the prophecy in relation to the overthrow of this nation, and their destruction.
Orson Pratt, Deseret Evening News, v. 8, no. 265; see also N.B. Lundwall, comp., Inspired Prophetic Warnings, 1940, p. 26
Orson Pratt
The people of Utah are the only ones in this nation who have taken effectual measures... to prevent adulteries and criminal connections between the sexes. The punishment, for these crimes is death to both male and female. And this law is written on the hearths and printed in the thoughts of the whole people.
Orson Pratt, The Seer, p. 223
Heber C. Kimball
Will the President [James Buchanan] that sits in the chair of state be tipped from his seat? Yes, he will die an untimely death, and God Almighty will curse him; and He will also curse his successor, if he takes the same anti‑Mormon stand.
Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses 5:133
Dallin H. Oaks
Leaving the list of dangers peculiar to students, I come to the subject of patriotism. Love of country is surely a strength, but carried to excess it can become the cause of spiritual downfall. There are some citizens whose patriotism (as they define it) is so intense and so all‑consuming that it seems to override every other responsibility, including family and church. For example, I caution those patriots who are participating in or provisioning private armies and making private preparations for armed conflict. Their excessive zeal for one aspect of patriotism is causing them to risk spiritual downfall as they withdraw from the society of the Church and from the governance of those civil authorities to whom our article of faith makes all of us subject.
Dallin H. Oaks, BYU Fireside, "Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall", June 07, 1992
John A. Widtsoe
Latter-day Saints know, through modern revelation, that the Garden of Eden was on the North American continent and that Adam and Eve began their conquest of the earth in the upper part of what is now the state of Missouri. It seems very probable that the children of our first earthly parents moved down along the fertile, pleasant lands of the Mississippi valley."
John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, three volumes in one, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft 1960, p. 127
Marion G. Romney
If, in the meantime, socialism takes over in America, it will have to be displaced, if need be, by the power of God, because the United Order can never function under socialism or "the welfare state," for the good and sufficient reason that the principles upon which socialism and the United Order are conceived and operated are inimical.
Marion G. Romney, Socialism and the United Order Compared (Marion G. Romney, 1966 Annual General Conference, Improvement Era)
Marion G. Romney
I pray ... that we will develop the understanding, the desire, and the courage, born of the Spirit, to eschew socialism and to support and sustain, in the manner revealed and as interpreted by the Lord, those just and holy principles embodied in the Constitution of the United States for the protection of all flesh, in the exercise of their God‑given agency.
Marion G. Romney, Socialism and the United Order Compared (Marion G. Romney, 1966 Annual General Conference, Improvement Era)
John Morgan
Brother Taylor says that language cannot express the conduct, the feelings, and the spirit that are upon the people in the States. Well, suppose you take up a labor and swear about them, what are the worst words that can be spoken? 'Nigger stealing,' Mobs or Vigilance Committees, and Rotten‑hearted Administrators of a Government are three of the meanest and wickedest words that can be spoken. I expect that somebody will write that back to the States, as being treasonable, because spoken by a Latter‑day Saint.
John Morgan, Journal of Discourses 23:6
Paul H. Dunn
[Paul H. Dunn told a] tale about his best friend, 'who died in his arms during a World War II battle, while imploring Dunn to teach America's youth about patriotism.' Then there was the riveting account of how God protected him as enemy machine‑gun bullets ripped away his clothing, gear and helmet without ever touching his skin.' Another inspirational yarn explained 'how perseverance and Mormon values led him to play major‑league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals.' Unfortunately, none of these stories were true. Dunn's 'dead' friend was still alive; only the heel of his boot was ever touched by a bullet; and he never played for the Cardinals.
Paul H. Dunn, Abanes, One Nation Under Gods, p. 427
Martin Harris
Within four years from September 1832, there will not be one wicked person left in the United States; that the righteous will be gathered to Zion (Missouri,) and that there will be no President over these United States at that time.... I do hereby assert and declare that in four years from the date thereof [1832], every sectarian and religious denomination in the United States, shall be broken down, and every Christian shall be gathered unto the Mormonites, and the rest of the human race shall perish.
Martin Harris, Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, 1834, p. 14
Martin Harris
There would never be another President of the United States elected; soon all temporal and spiritual power would be given over to the prophet Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saints.
Martin Harris, via Albert Chandler, worker who helped bind 1830 Book of Mormon, see Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, v. 3, pp. 222‑223
LeGrand Richards
You [Jews] have been driven, robbed, and ravished — so have we. You have been persecuted, mistreated, misunderstood — so have we. Why? We were driven from our homes to desolation beyond the boundaries of the United States. You, too, have been driven. Why? What a power we could be in the world if we [Mormons and Jews] were united... the complete accomplishment of our mutual and heaven‑assigned responsibilities involves our becoming united (as the descendants of Joseph) with the descendants of Judah (the Jewish people) in the fulfilment of the promises given by the Lord to Abraham and renewed upon the heads of Isaac and Jacob, that through them and their seed all nations of the earth would be blessed.
LeGrand Richards, "The Mormons and the Jewish People," pamphlet, n.d., p. 1
Bryan Waterman
Operating within an understanding of national events that saw both "campus unrest" and Democratic party victories as signs of a looming socialist state, Wilkinson returned to BYU from his failed political venture. In May 1965, at the end of his first semester back in office, he delivered an apocalyptic commencement address: "The Decline and Possible Fall of the American Republic." Citing rising rates of crime, juvenile delinquency, immorality, divorce, and public welfare, the president blamed these "evidences of moral decay" on the steady increase of federal power beginning with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and extending to Lyndon Johnson's views on social security. Together with the "confiscatory" nature of income tax, an increase of Supreme Court influence, and the federal government's "deficit financing," these proofs (in Wilkinson's mind) of federally funded moral decline spelled the end of cherished American freedoms.
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
Bryan Waterman
Wilkinson based his address largely on the words of Mormon leaders from Joseph Smith to the current church president and ardent cold warrior, David O. McKay. In particular he emphasized a "prophecy attributed to the Prophet Joseph that the Constitution of the United States would hang by a single thread, but be saved by the Elders of Israel," meaning church leaders and Mormon men generally. Having failed in his bid for public office, Wilkinson sought to act on "the duty of a university president" in "times of national and world crisis ... to speak forth boldly in behalf of what he considers to be the truth." Confessing his belief that "my generation has failed you [graduates] in preserving and strengthening the Constitution," Wilkinson vowed that he would mail copies of his talk, along with a compendium of anti‑communist "prophetic utterances," to every graduate, "with the hope that you may help stem the tide that is now engulfing our country."
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
© 2011