Topic: Government, Good, Matches 11 quotes.

Since the founding of the Republic the roots of our nation have drawn nurture from the waters of faith in God. “In God we trust” is the motto that appears on our money. As we face into the third century of our national life, it is time that we renewed our spiritual anchors. “Look to God and live,” said an ancient prophet. As it was then, so it is today. “God Bless America” is the song we sing with reverence and pleading. Those blessings will come only as we deserve them. The inspired men who wrote our Constitution were raised up by the God of heaven “unto this very purpose.” Can we expect peace and prosperity, harmony and goodwill while turning our backs on the source of our strength?

George Washington in his farewell address declared:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.

The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them . . . .

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. This rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. (Quoted by J. Reuben Clark in Stand Fast By Our Constitution [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1973], p. 27.)

Source: President Gordon B. Hinckley
Address given 26 June 1988 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Government, Good; Morality

This government, the offspring of our own choice un-influenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty.

Source: George Washington

Topics: Government, Good; Liberty; US Constitution

On this holiday we celebrate, as we have for more than two hundred years, the establishment of a government in a country unlike any other in the history of the world. It has had at its very heart the concept of a government “instituted of God for the benefit of man” (D&C 134:1). The deepest taproots of our nation and state have lain in the very essence of our humanity, our faith in God. This nation as a democracy has as its basic foundation a government of laws and equality of all before the law. Under the Constitution it has the right and the duty to institute laws to protect its citizenry in their inalienable rights, recognizing that, as the Doctrine and Covenants says, “sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished accordingly” (D&C 134:5). The government has the right and duty to enact laws, within the institutions set up by the Constitution, which are best calculated to secure the public interest while at the same time preserving the individual rights of its citizenry.

Source: James E. Faust
Address given 2 July 1995 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Government, Good; Law; Rights

The path we have to pursue is so quiet that we have nothing scarcely to propose to our Legislature (the Congress). A noiseless course not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness.

[About the number of laws added to the federal register in 1801.]

Source: Thomas Jefferson

Topics: Government, Good; Government, Purpose; Law

Whoever lives to see the Kingdom of God fully established upon the earth will see a government that will protect every person in his rights. If that government was now reigning upon this land of Joseph, you would see the Roman Catholic, the Greek Catholic, the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, the Methodist, the Baptist, the Quaker, the Shaker, the Hindo, the Mahometan, and every class of worshipers most strictly protected in all their municipal rights and in the privileges of worshiping who, what, and when they pleased, not infringing upon the rights of others. Does any candid person in his sound judgment desire any greater liberty?

Source: Brigham Young
JD 6:342-343.

Topics: Freedom, Religious; Government, Good; Rights

Good administration of government

But in any society, good government can be had only if administered by good men, selected by good citizens.

To be a good citizen, we should learn for ourselves what is set forth in the constitution. This knowledge can be obtained only through individual study of the document itself. We must not only study it, but we must also guard it. It was Daniel Webster who uttered these prophetic words: “Watchful guardianship over the Constitution is, the proper means for its support. . . .”

In addition to the love of God and the love of our neighbor and, as Jesus said, the love of our enemies, there should be found in each of us a love of our country and of the constitution which binds it together.

Source: Elder ElRay L. Christiansen
General Conference, October 1967

Topics: Citizenship; Government, Good

As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it, in reason, morality, and the natural fitness of things. And therefore every act of government, every exercise of sovereignty against or without the consent of the people is injustice, usurpation, and tyranny. It is a maxim that in every government there must exist somewhere a supreme, sovereign, absolute and uncontrollable power; and it never was, or can be delegated to one man or few; the great Creator having never given to men a right to vest others with authority over them unlimited either in duration or degree.

When kings, ministers, governors, or legislators, therefore, instead of exercising the powers intrusted with them according to the principles, forms, and proportions stated by the Constitution, and established by the original compact, prostitute those powers to the purposes of oppression; to subvert, instead of preserving the lives, liberties and properties of the people, they are no longer to be deemed magistrates vested with a sacred character, but become public enemies and ought to be resisted.

Source: John Adams
Works, I, p. 193.

Topics: Government, Good; Government, Loss of Freedom

Preach that the plan involves the belief that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man. Man was not born for the benefit of the state. Preach that no government can exist in peace, and I quote from the Doctrine and Covenants, except such laws are framed and held inviolate, as will secure to each individual the “free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life.”

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, April 1952

Topics: Government, Good

Good Government And Good Men

There has been running through my mind a statement by William Penn: “If men be good, government can not be bad.” At first I was inclined to challenge it seriously, as we are inclined to challenge all statements of broad generalization. I challenged it because I thought of all the exceptions to the rule. I thought of all the peoples, historically and also in the present, who had become captive peoples and oppressed peoples quite beyond their choice or their power to resist. I thought of all the straight-thinking minorities who have resisted the popular fallacies in every generation and in every country. But I became convinced, as I thought further through William Penn’s statement, that it had a broad and fundamental truth in it: “If men be good, government can not be bad”—in the long view of things, and admitting all the exceptions.

Source: Elder Richard L. Evans
General Conference, April 1945

Topics: Government, Good; Morality

•  ⟨⟨ 
•  ⟨ 
•   |  
•  ⟩ 
•  ⟩⟩