Topic: Education, Matches 61 quotes.

Brigham Young on Education

We had to pay our own school teachers, raise our own bread and earn our own clothing, or go without, there was no other choice. We did it then, and we are able to do the same to-day. I want to enlist the sympathies of the ladies among the Latter-day Saints, to see what we can do for ourselves with regard to schooling our children. Do not say you cannot school them, for you can. There is not a family in this community but what we will take and school their children if they are not able to do it themselves; and we do not do it through begging in the East and telling what others have told there about this people, and about their own efforts to establish free schools here. I understand that the other night there was a school meeting in one of the wards of this city, and a part there—a poor miserable apostate—said, “We want a free school, and we want to have the name of establishing the first free school in Utah.” To call a person a poor miserable apostate may seem like a harsh word; but what shall we call a man who talks about free schools and who would have all the people taxed to support them, and yet would take his rifle and threaten to shoot the man who had the collection of the ordinary light taxes levied in this Territory—taxes which are lighter than any levied in any other portion of the country? We have no other schools but free schools here—our schools are all free. Our meetings are free, our teachings are free. We labor for ourselves and the kingdom of God.

Source: Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses
Vol.16, p.19 - p.20, April 7, 1873

Topics: Education

Light and liberty go together.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to Tench Coxe, 1795.

Topics: Education

Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Madison Version FE 4:480

Topics: Education

We are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds and affections of our youth... This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to James Breckinridge, 1821. ME 15:315

Topics: Education

I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.

Source: Thomas Jefferson: Reply to American Philosophical Society, 1808.

Topics: Education

In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed . . . . No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

Source: Noah Webster
Reply to a Letter of David McClure on the Subject of the Proper
Course of Study in the Girard College, Philadelphia. New Haven
October 25, 1836

Topics: Christianity; Education

Cherish constitution in the home

It is the obligation of parents to acquaint their children with this great document:

1. That they may have understanding of and appreciation for the principles that make their liberty and freedom possible.

2. They should be taught as well what their personal obligations will be when they become mature citizens of the United States.

3. We must see to it that they learn the factual history of our country.

4. They must be made to recognize and resist the constantly fomented ideologies that threaten the very life of our republic, the individual liberties of our people, and the God-given heritage of freedom. One of the greatest contributions of a free people is to transmit that freedom to their children.

We must remember that reverence for and obedience to law should begin in the home. President David O. McKay has warned that “no greater immediate responsibility rests upon the members of the Church, upon all citizens of this Republic, and of neighboring Republics, than to protect the freedom vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States.” (The Improvement Era, May 1950, p. 378.)

In the face of the conditions as they are today, it seems imperative that individuals develop loyalty to their country and responsibility for their own behavior. Such attributes are ideally based on knowledge, which requires deliberate effort to obtain. Thomas Paine, one of the early patriots, reminded us that “what we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”

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

Topics: Education; Responsibility; US Constitution

The other day one of our young men, in most vitriolic language, was denouncing the bureaucracy of our present government, and someone asked him, to his great embarrassment, what a bureaucrat was, and he did not have the slightest idea, but in his home he had heard bureaucrats denounced. Now, that sort of uncritical denunciation is foolish.

It behooves us, as men holding the Priesthood, to examine governmental procedures and if those procedures result in the general good, if those procedures are compatible with the Gospel, the Lord’s word, it is our business to foster them, and if necessary fight for them, just as it is our business to examine governmental procedures, and where we find them out of harmony with the Lord’s word, to fight against them, no matter what high- sounding names those procedures may be given.

Brethren, let us not be discouraged because we are what is called a minority. What is a minority? The Latin has a motto, multum in parvo: “Much in small space.” In the field of biochemistry it has been proved that one part of adrenalin—one of the endocrine secretions—in 100,000 parts of water, will cause certain live tissue to react. In statistical terms that one part in 100,000 is a minority.

Jesus of Nazareth, in terms of the census, was a pitiful, almost a ridiculous, minority; but Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, is the greatest power we know, before whom ultimately every knee shall bow. Let us not be discouraged by the specious argument that we are of relatively little moment because we are a minority.

Source: Elder Joseph F. Smith
General Conference, October 1943

Topics: Education; Responsibility

Greatness of the Constitution to be Taught

There is another great love, not only love of God and love of one’s neighbor—and might I say that love of one’s neighbor is best exhibited in the service that we render to those who are around us—but there should be love of country, that which has been so impressed upon us here during this Conference. I wonder how often, as parents, we take dusty copies of the Constitution of the United States from our book cases or our libraries, spread them out on the table, and then invite our boys and girls to come and go over the articles of that sacred document, one by one. I wonder, if an examination were given to the citizens of the United States today, relevant to the Constitution of the United States, how many of us would pass it successfully? There rests upon us most definitely the obligation of acquainting our boys and girls with this great document; teach it to them article by article, that they might understand the principles involved therein, principles that make for liberty, freedom, and personal initiative and of worshiping God according to the dictates of one’s conscience.

Our boys and girls should know and understand that the Constitution made it possible for the organization of a government under which the Church of Jesus Christ could again be restored to the earth.. Do we ever read to our boys and girls the sentiments expressed by prophets of God in connection with this great document, such as the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith: “The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard. It is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner. It is, to all of those who are privileged with the sweets of its liberty, like the cooling shade and refreshing water of a great rock in a dreary and thirsty land. It is like a great tree, under whose banners men from every clime can be sheltered from the burning rays of the sun.”

These words of the Prophet Joseph Smith, relative to this great document of liberty and freedom, should be so ingrained in the hearts of our boys and girls that they will feel we not only have standard Church works, such as the Bible and the Book of Mormon, etc., but that we also have standard government works, the first of which is the Constitution of the United States.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, October 1939

Topics: Education

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