Topic: Freedom, Matches 23 quotes.

We have to accept some government limitations on freedom if we who live in communities are to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A condition of uninhibited individual freedom would allow the strong to oppress the weak. It would allow the eccentric desires of one person to restrict the freedom of many.

Interferences with our freedom do not deprive us of our free agency. When Pharaoh put Joseph in prison, he restricted Joseph’s freedom, but he did not take away his free agency. When Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple, he interfered with their freedom to engage in a particular activity at a particular time in a particular place, but he did not take away their free agency.

The Lord has told us in modern revelation that he established the Constitution of the United States to assure “that every many may act ... according to the moral agency which I have given unto him” (D&C 101:78). In other words, God established our Constitution to [10] give us the vital political freedom necessary for us to act upon our personal choices in civil government. This revelation shows the distinction between agency (the power of choice), which is God-given and freedom, the right to act upon our choices, which is protected by the Constitution and laws of the land.

Freedom is obviously of great importance, but, as these examples illustrate, freedom is always qualified in mortality. Consequently, it would be better if we did not conduct a public policy debate in terms of a loss of free agency, which is impossible under our doctrine. We ought to focus on the legality or wisdom of a proposed restriction of our freedom.

Source: Elder Dallin H. Oaks
Free Agency And Freedom
Forty-Fifth Annual Joseph Smith Memorial Service
LDS Institute of Religion, Logan, Utah
Sunday, January 17, 1988

Topics: Free Agency; Freedom

God hath made them free

And now, in your epistle you have censured me, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart. I, Pahoran, do not seek for power, save only to retain my judgment-seat that I may preserve the rights and the liberty of my people. My soul standeth fast in that liberty in the which God hath made us free. . . . according to the Spirit of God, which is also the Spirit of freedom which is in them.

God will deliver them, yea, and also all those who stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath made them free.

Source: Alma 61:9, 15, 21

Topics: Freedom

Force cannot be used in the interests of freedom—except for self-defense and rebellion against slavery. This holds true whether the force is applied by a majority or a minority. It holds true whether the force is applied by a robber with a pistol or by a representative of the majority of the people who have voted to force other persons to do what the majority considers “best for them.” The theory now held in this country that the votes of the majority automatically insure freedom is incorrect. It is now leading us to our own destruction. Might has never made right. It never will.

This is not to deny that a republic or representative democracy is the most desirable form of government we have yet discovered. It is not to deny that freedom is safer in the hands of the many than in the hands of the few. But it is to deny that freedom is automatically safe just because the franchise has become widespread in America; just because we call ourselves “a democracy.” It requires more than a vote to preserve liberty; it requires understanding on the part of the voters; it requires the knowledge that all governmental decrees and actions must be grounded on moral and natural law if they are to benefit the people.

Source: Dean Russell
What Can I Do?, Essays on Liberty, volume 3

Topics: Force; Freedom; Voting

Maintaining our Freedom

What is our position today? Take, for example, public affairs. I read recently a comment of one of our national statesmen, Adlai Stevenson, “Our condition has nothing to do with any deficiency of technology or resources. It is a matter of people forgetting that political freedom can be sustained only by continuing individual commitment.” As he continues: “The great German poet Goethe, who also lived through a crisis of freedom, said to his generation ‘What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves or it will not be yours.’ We inherited freedom. We seem unaware that it has to be remade and re-earned in each generation of man.”

Source: Elder Henry D. Moyle
April 1959 General Conference

Topics: Freedom

True Freedom

Someone has said, “There are two freedoms; the false freedom where one is free to do what he likes, and the true freedom where one is free to do what he ought to do.”

I think it is appropriate and timely to discuss some things as they are and can be, as well as to consider the difference between loyalty and disloyalty as pertains to the true and false freedoms.

First, loyalty to true freedom principles or causes embraces love, dedication, faith, allegiance, willingness to sacrifice, and many other qualities that contribute to achievement and happiness.

Disloyalty to true freedom principles or causes embraces betrayal, unfaithfulness, disaffection, sedition, infidelity, and other qualities that contribute to failure, destruction, and unhappiness.

Loyalty to false freedom principles can only bring delusion, a counterfeit happiness, and eventual destruction. False freedom principles include such things as the abuse of one’s body by the use of drugs, liquor, and tobacco, as well as sexual immoralities. False freedom principles likewise include the spread of communistic doctrine and protest by force.

In reality, true freedom can only exist in doing what is right, in being loyal—yes, in doing what we ought to do.

Source: Elder Franklin D. Richards
General Conference, April 1969

Topics: Freedom

But we who love the word of God need not depend on the dictionary alone for our understanding of the concept of freedom. We can study the scriptures to gain spiritual insight. In analyzing the standard works in the English language, I find that the word freedom appears in thirty-three verses of holy scripture. Twenty-seven of those thirty-three verses are in the Book of Mormon. To me, it is quite remarkable that the number of verses with the terms freedom or liberty in the Book of Mormon is nearly double that of the other books of scripture combined!

Source: Elder Russell M. Nelson
Address given 1 July 1990 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Freedom

Indeed, the root of freedom is responsibility. The stem of freedom is discipline. The flower of freedom is vigilance.

Responsibility, discipline, and vigilance can be dispensed neither from the U.S. Treasury nor from private donations. This perception was shared by the Deputy Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, with whom my associates and I spoke earlier this year. When we asked what specific aid could be rendered to Czechoslovakia’s new democratic government, he replied: “We don’t need material goods or technology. We need a new spirit. We need moral values. We need the Judeo-Christian ethic back in our curriculum. Please help us to make this a time of spiritual renewal for our nation.”

In April of this year we met with the Minister of Education in the Republic of Estonia. We asked him a similar question. He replied that the Estonian economy is changing rapidly. He noted an urgent need to educate his people differently. He said: “There is much work to be done in rewriting our text books. We have the hope that religion can be taught in all of the schools and that the spirit of Christianity can be woven within the fabric of our curriculum.”

As he made those remarks I thought of the irony that strong forces in these United States are trying to eradicate all evidences of religion or piety from our public schools. Meanwhile, citizens in these European nations that have been so deprived of religious influence now feel the detrimental impact of that loss.

Source: Elder Russell M. Nelson
Address given 1 July 1990 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: Freedom; Responsibility

While perhaps it is seldom, if ever, contended that either political independence or economic freedom alone brings perfect liberty, it is not, however, uncommon for free agency to be considered as synonymous with freedom of the soul. And it is true that the God-given right to choose one’s course of action is an indispensable prerequisite to such freedom. Without it we can scarcely enjoy any type of liberty—political, economic, or personal. It is one of our greatest heritages. For it we are deeply indebted to our Father in Heaven, to the Founding Fathers, and to the pioneers. God gave it to man in the Garden of Eden. (See Moses 7:32.) The Founding Fathers, under the Lord’s inspiration, wrote a guarantee of it into the fundamental law of the land. And the pioneers, led by the inspiration of heaven, gave their all to perpetuate it. Surely we ought always to be alert in its defense and willing, if necessary, to give our lives for its preservation.

Source: President Marion G. Romney
General Conference, October 1981

Topics: Free Agency; Freedom

Mormonism holds a singular and unique position in the world, claiming as it does to be The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is a creed founded in righteousness, established, in this perfect law of liberty, and it challenges the world to produce anything like the organization which the Lord has revealed, and through which He makes manifest His righteousness and His purposes in the earth. Without this Priesthood, we are told, the power of godliness is not made manifest to men in the flesh.

We mistake greatly if we think that in the struggle for this liberty, in the fighting which began three hundred years ago, and continued during two hundred years—we mistake greatly if we think that that contention and struggle was for the purpose of establishing any particular creed, or branch of the Church. The contention of the Protestants, who protested against the misrule of the Catholic Church, was not that they should establish any particular kind of a church, it was a contention and fight against tyranny; it was a fight for liberty—liberty that they might establish a church, if they chose to do so, or do without one if they chose; but it was for liberty and against oppression. I say all honor to Protestantism. No man shall go before me in honoring that spirit of patriotism which was manifested all through the struggle in the Netherlands, in the low countries, in fighting that terrible oppressor the Duke of Alva, sent by the Spanish government and the Pope—not in the interests of liberty but to crush out the spirit of liberty. But the little thing that the Lord had planted, this desire for liberty, grew in the hearts of the children of men, and it became the great thing in England, as well as in Holland, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, with Sir Francis Drake scouring the seas and capturing the Spanish galleons, with their treasure loads of gold from Peru and Mexico. All that was not that any particular brand of church might be established; that is to say, that they wanted this church or the other church; the fight was—let me tell you again—that liberty should be established, so that men could worship as they pleased, how they pleased, or not worship at all, if they so pleased. The time had not yet come for the Church of Jesus Christ to be established; and all honor, I say, to the Protestant countries and Protestant peoples who caused liberty to become established.

So, a little later, in our own Country, the same fight, the same contention, the same struggle is on—not to establish one church or the other, but for liberty. In Washington’s time, the liberty, which this flag [pointing to the national emblem], now represents was fully accomplished, when there was enacted in our Constitution a full fruition of this fighting and struggling,—in these words: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, nor the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.” That being enacted into law and becoming the law of the country, then the liberty that all these people had been fighting for was granted to our country, and became an accomplished fact. Now, when that was accomplished, God Almighty, in His own way, sends forth what? A more perfect law of liberty and righteousness, more perfect than the Constitution of the country itself, in the bringing forth of His Church in these last days, in raising up the Prophet Joseph Smith as He did and instructing him how to prepare this wonderful organization, with the Priesthood of the Son of God as its governing power.

Source: Bishop Charles W. Nibley
General Conference, October 1909

Topics: America, Heritage; Freedom; Freedom, History; US Constitution, Amendments

•  ⟨⟨ 
•  ⟨ 
•   |  
•  ⟩ 
•  ⟩⟩