Mormon Quotes

Utah

John Taylor
This Greeley is one of their popular characters in the East, and one that supports the stealing of Niggers...
John Taylor, Journal of Discourses 5:119
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"
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
Ann Eliza Young
There is no despotic monarchy in the world where the word of the sovereign is so absolute as in Utah. And never, in the whole history of Mormonism, has the despotic rule been so arbitrary as it was during the period of, and for a short time after, the Reformation [Brigham Young's reign].
Ann Eliza Young, Ann Eliza Young, wife of Brigham Young, Wife No. 19, 1875; Chapter 18
John D. Lee
I knew of many men being killed in Nauvoo by the Danites. It was then the rule that all the enemies of the Prophet Joseph should be killed, and I know of many a man who was quietly put out of the way by the orders of Joseph and his apostles while the Church was there. It has always been a well understood doctrine of the Church that it is right and praiseworthy to kill every person who speaks evil of the Prophet. This doctrine was strictly lived up to in Utah...
John D. Lee, John D. Lee Diaries
Orson Hyde
We feel it to be our duty to define our position in relation to the subject of slavery. There are several men in the valley of the Salt Lake from the Southern States, who have their slaves with them.
Orson Hyde, Millennial Star, 1851, p. 63
Orson Hyde
I would have a tendency to place terror on those who leave these parts [Utah], that may prove their salvation when they see the heads of thieves taken off, or shot down before the public... I believe it would be pleasing in the sight of heaven to sanctify ourselves and put these things out of our midst.
Orson Hyde, Journal of Discourses 1:73
D. Michael Quinn
In the past decade, potential jurors in every Utah capital homicide were asked whether they believed in the Mormon concept of 'blood atonement.'
D. Michael Quinn, Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 5, 1994, p. D1
B. H. Roberts
Mr. Greeley was disappointed in the lack of abolition sentiment in Salt Lake City.
B. H. Roberts, History of the Church 4:533
Joseph Smith III
About 1842, a new and larger house was built for us.... Father proceeded to build an extensive addition running out from the south wing to the east.... At any rate, it seemed spacious then, and a sign was put out giving it the dignified name of 'The Nauvoo Mansion,' ... Mother was to be installed as landlady, and soon made a trip to Saint Louis.... When she returned Mother found installed in the keeping‑room of the hotel ‑ that is to say, the main room where the guests assembled and where they were received upon arrival — a bar, with counter, shelves, bottles, glasses, and other paraphernalia customary for a fully‑equipped tavern bar, and Porter Rockwell in charge as tender. She was very much surprised and disturbed over this arrangement, but said nothing for a while... she asked me where Father was. I told her he was in the front room... Then she told me to go and tell him she wished to see him. I obeyed, and returned with him to the hall where Mother awaited him. 'Joseph,' she asked, 'for the spiritual head of a religious body to be keeping a hotel in which is a room fitted out as a liquor‑selling establishment.' He reminded her that all taverns had their bars at which liquor was sold or dispensed. Mother's reply came emphatically clear, though uttered quietly: 'Well, Joseph, ... I will take my children and go across to the old house and stay there, for I will not have them raised up under such conditions as this arrangement imposes on us, nor have them mingle with the kind of men who frequent such a place. You are at liberty to make your choice; either that bar goes out the house, or we will!' It did not take Father long to make that choice, for he replied immediately, 'Very well, Emma; I will have it removed at once' — and he did.
Joseph Smith III, The Saint's Herald, January 22, 1935, p. 101
Hubert Howe Bancroft
Stills were afterward obtained from emigrants, and the manufacture and sale of alcohol were later controlled by the city councils. The first bar‑room in S.L. City, and the only one for years, was in the Salt Lake House, owned by President Young and Feramorz Little. It was opened for the accommodation of travelers, whose requirements would be supplied by some one, and it was thought by the brethren that they had better control the trade than have outsiders do so.
Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah, p. 540, footnote 44
Bill Hickman
It was one of the hot‑beds of fanaticism, and I expect that more men were killed there, in proportion to population, than in any other part of Utah. In that settlement it was certain death to say a word against the authorities, high or low.
Bill Hickman, Brigham Young's Destroying Angel, 1964, p. 284
Gustive O. Larson
To whatever extent the preaching on blood atonement may have influenced action, it would have been in relation to Mormon disciplinary action among its own members. In point would be a verbally reported case of a Mr. Johnson in Cedar City who was found guilty of adultery with his step‑daughter by a bishop's court and sentenced to death for atonement of his sin. According to the report of reputable eyewitnesses, judgment was executed with consent of the offender who went to his unconsecrated grave in full confidence of salvation through the shedding of his blood. Such a case, however primitive, is understandable within the means of this doctrine and the emotional extremes of the [Mormon] reformation.
Gustive O. Larson, Dr. Gustive O. Larson, BYU Professor, Utah Historical Quarterly, Jan. 1958, p. 62, note 39
Keith Norman
Well, if I understand Elder McConkie, he was saying that, although earlier Church leader's never believed, preached, or practiced blood atonement, we actually do believe in it and would practice it if we had the legal and political power to do so. (Even thought we didn't when Brigham Young presided over the theocratic territory of Deseret.)
Keith Norman, Sunstone, Aug. 1990, p. 11
Curtis R. Canning
In Mormondom, there is a social expectation‑‑particularly among the females‑‑to put on a mask, say 'Yes' to everything that comes at her and hide the misery and pain. I call it the "Mother of Zion" syndrome. You are supposed to be perfect because Mrs. Smith across the street can do it and she has three more kids than you and her hair is always in place. I think the cultural issue is very real. There is the expectation that you should be happy, and if you're not happy, you're failing.
Curtis R. Canning, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 20, 2002, "Study Finds Utah Leads Nation in Antidepressant Use," by Julie Cart
Bryan Waterman
The Mormon tradition of celebrating the church's educational endeavors has some roots in pre‑Utah Mormon history, but dates most certainly from turn‑of‑the‑century debates over public schooling in Utah territory. When church leaders realized that the non‑Mormons among them had enough political power to make public schooling inevitable, they threw their weight into the public school movement and launched a public relations campaign to portray Mormons as "friends of education." In the early 1890s, following the church's disavowal of polygamy, leaders invited a number of prominent American educators, such as Harvard president Charles Eliot, to Utah to see for themselves if Mormonism's success depended on ignorant masses, as newspapers of the day claimed. Forgetting that Utah's public schools would not have existed without "gentile" (non‑Mormon) prodding, church leaders welcomed the praise the state's schools received during a 1913 National Education Association conference in Salt Lake City. In 1915 Mormons marked the entrance to Utah's exhibit at the Panama‑Pacific Exposition in San Francisco with Brigham Young's aphorism: "Education is the power to think clearly; the power to act well in the world's work, and the power to appreciate life." The church's reputation also benefitted from attention given to the "Utah Plan," a model educational system ("social uplift with a vengeance," in one historian's view) for the national Progressive Education movement in the 1920s. By the 1947 centennial of the Mormon pioneers' entry into the Salt Lake Valley, high claims for Mormon education (or Utah education) were commonplace among church members; mid‑twentieth‑century Mormon leaders pointed to LDS and Utah educational success as a sign of the church's divine nature, claiming that "the Latter‑day Saints present a picture of educational achievement second to none in Ame
Bryan Waterman, The Lord's University: Freedom and Authority at BYU, December 15, 1998
Julie Cart
Doctors here have for years talked about the widespread use of antidepressants in the state. But there was no hard evidence until a national study that tracked drug prescriptions came to an unexpected conclusion: Antidepressant drugs are prescribed in Utah more often than in any other state, at a rate nearly twice the national average.
Julie Cart, New York Times, February 20, 2002
Mark A. Taylor
While the number of teen suicides in America has tripled in the past decade, Utah has consistently been 3.5% higher than the national average.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Mark A. Taylor
According to that state's Department of Vital Statistics, it ranks 13th nationally in child abuse, but comparing Utah statistics with those compiled by the National Association for the Protection of Children, the incidence of reported child abuse is six times higher in Utah. The incidence of sexual abuse — including rape, incest and intercourse — is 33% more than the national average, and the child‑murder rate is five times higher.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Mark A. Taylor
Utah has the highest birthrate and the largest families in America. More than 50% of all births are by teenage mothers, with seven of ten out of wedlock, and it has one of the highest divorce rates in the nation.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Wallace Stegner
The Utah deserts and plateaus and canyons are not a country of big returns, but a country of spiritual healing, incomparable for contemplation, meditation, solitude, quiet, awe, peace of mind and body. We were born of wilderness, and we respond to it more than we sometimes realize. We depend upon it increasingly for relief from the termite life we have created. Factories, power plants, resorts, we can make anywhere. Wilderness, once we have given it up, is beyond our reconstruction.
Wallace Stegner, Wilderness at the Edge
Wallace Stegner
This was the country the Mormons settled, the country which, as Brigham Young with some reason hoped, no one else wanted. Its destiny was plain on its face, its contempt of man and his history and his theological immortality, his Millennium, his Heaven on Earth, was monumentally obvious. Its distances were terrifying, its cloudbursts catastrophic, its beauty flamboyant and bizarre and allied with death.
Wallace Stegner, Mormon Country
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