Topic: Morality, Matches 55 quotes.

Still, the great question remained: were these American people in this new American nation really capable of fulfilling their personal, ethical, private as well as public responsibilities, especially as they believed them to be God-given responsibilities?

Through their knowledge of history, their commitment to the moral values and traditions in which they believed, and through their own experience, the American founding fathers knew that a morally corrupt people could never enjoy the luxury of freedom. Their teacher, the great English philosopher, Edmund Burke, had said it best:

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites [May I repeat that: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites.”] . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”16

16. Edmund Burke, The Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 4 (Waltham, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1866), pp. 51-52.

Source: Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Address given 30 June 1996 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: America, Heritage; Morality

Among the most important terms used in this new language of the Republic were “moral sense” and “virtue.” Thomas Jefferson, for example, believed that if moral sense and personal virtue had not been God-given within the human being, then the building of any republic—especially the one we enjoy today—would simply have been impossible.

According to Jefferson, “passions and appetites are parts of human nature,” but so are “reason and moral sense.“17 “It would have been inconsistent [by God] in [the very act of] creation,” he insisted, “to have found man for [life in a] social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of [that] society.“18 “I believe that it is instinct[ive], and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our [personal] constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing. A wise Creator must have seen [this as] necessary in [a being] destined to live [together] in society.“19

17. C. E Adams, Writings of John Adams, vol. 6, p. 115.

18. Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), p. 388.

19. Ibid., p. 492.

Source: Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Address given 30 June 1996 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Morality; Virtue

Clearly the key to true liberty lay in the human heart, and today that means our hearts—yours and mine and our children and our childrens’ children—as well as those of Pilgrims, Puritans, and the original founding fathers.

As Alexander Hamilton said so beautifully: “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments and musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, [upon the soul of man.] . . . The Supreme Being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beautifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by which he could discern and pursue such things as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety.“29

So America was founded on principles of personal virtue and private morality that would give meaning and vitality to those more technical political principles of constitutional government with its executive, legislative, and judicial branches of activity. Undergirding all of this was the commitment of the individual citizen as well as that of the elected official. From such a personal devotion would come the determination to live together in peace and liberty and safety and freedom. These are blessings we want for ourselves, our children, our neighborhoods, and our world. They are very much the blessings for which this nation was settled and for which that initial War of Independence was fought.

29. Alexander Hamilton, “The Farmer Refuted,” (February, 1775); John C. Hamilton, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 2 (New York: Charles S. Francis, 1851), p. 80.

Source: Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Address given 30 June 1996 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: America, Heritage; Morality

In the sincere observances of the principles of true religion and virtue, we recognize the base, the only sure foundation of enlightened society and well-established government.

Source: Brigham Young
JD 2:178.

Topics: Morality; Virtue

How can a republican government stand? There is only one way for it to stand. It can endure; but how? It can endure, as the government of heaven endures, upon the eternal rock of truth and virtue; and that is the only basis upon which any government can endure.

Source: Brigham Young
JD 9:4.

Topics: Government, Forms of; Morality; Virtue

Washington said that morality and religion were the firmest props of government. I say morality—private morality—is indispensable to a good society rounded on happy homes in nations of freedom. One of the disappointments that has come to me in the observation of our political life is that all too frequently our citizens are prone to tolerate private immorality in public office, and that by comity neither side will accuse the other. I do not make this indictment general, but I firmly believe that there are a sufficient number of cases of hypocritical living in public affairs, and a sufficient number of instances of infidelity in the homes of the land, exposed and unexposed, as to have furnished an example for youth which has not been encouraging. The need of the hour is for good example and good teaching, and teaching is very difficult without the fortification of example.

Source: President Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, April 1957

Topics: Morality

Is there any such thing as mass morality? The Master taught us that as a man, not the masses thinks, so is he, not they. It is true that if enough individuals are convinced of spiritual realities, they can greatly influence the society in which they move but it is the individual and not the mass mind which has the conviction.

I hope you will approve the application which I make of this principle. I don’t believe that men in high places, in government, in business, or elsewhere can successfully divorce their private lives from their public declarations and protestations. Nor do I believe that women who attain positions of eminence can do it either. We often speak of the gullible public, but I am very much inclined to think that there is enough of discernment in this public to see behind the idealistic words of speaker or writer, the consistency of performance. I note with growing concern the declination of governmental appointing power to take into consideration morality, except as it affects stealing and treason. The sooner men learn that they cannot teach virtue without living it the quicker we will attain the respect of those whose co-operation we seek. And what is even more important, the sooner we will bring ourselves to our own self-respect.

You will gather from these remarks that I would subject every representative of the American people, from the small community level, to state, national and international position, to the scrutiny and test of virtuous, moral standards. I would. Some will say, you are discounting the value of brains and “know-how” in this intricate business of government and sociology. I am not. I stand in awe in the presence of a great mind with superior intelligence devoted to human welfare. We are greatly dependent upon such minds, but if I had to make a choice, which I ought not to have to make, between talent and integrity, I would choose integrity and virtue, for without them we are lost.

Source: President Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1953

Topics: Morality

I think a good place to start is always at home. Each one of us should resolve that we in and of ourselves will develop qualities of leadership and of honesty and of integrity and of justice and equity. We should be willing to take these principles, these characteristics, the ability which we thus create within ourselves, and give ourselves to the benefit of our city and of our county and of our state and of our nation.

This year there will probably be no more than fifty percent of the qualified voters in this great nation who will exercise their franchise. The officers who may be elected in the great elections to be held this year will be elected by minorities and will not represent the vote or the will of the majority. You know there are two kinds of offenses in the world—offenses of commission and offenses of omission. We sometimes do things that we should not do, and then again, we do not do some things that we should. I hope that Latter-day Saints will not permit themselves, political- wise, to fall into this latter category and be classed among those who give offense because they fail to do that which they should do. I would like to know if a reason exists that would justify a Latter-day Saint in not exercising his franchise for the party and the man of his own choice.

No political party is justified to continue in existence unless it clearly states the principles which it advocates, the platform upon which its candidates stand, and then with integrity, when and if elected, carry out those principles and live up to that platform. Except that be the case, we as Latter-day Saints should not align ourselves to any party, because we do not have the basis upon which we can make an intelligent decision. We must know what they stand for before we can favor them with our vote. I do not ask you, my brethren and sisters, to go to the polls and just vote, important as that is; but that when you vote, you vote intelligently for those principles and those things and those men which will give to you the kind of government you want, the kind of environment that you desire for yourself and for your posterity.

Source: Elder Henry D. Moyle
General Conference, April 1952

Topics: Morality; Politics; Voting

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

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