Topic: America, History, Matches 40 quotes.

Of course, we continue to need the dramatic leadership of the likes of Washington, Franklin, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln, and so many others. But in addition we need to show that it really works all the way down to the grass roots level. We need a real demonstration of leadership in our homes, our neighborhoods, our schools, our communities, and our state.

Mediation is proper between two alternatives that are both right, but compromise is totally unjustified when it is between a right and a wrong course of action. Our founding fathers were inspired to deliver to this nation a conscience, a standard of values, with which we have been richly blessed in over two hundred years of our history.

Though times and seasons do change, foundation principles do not. This season of celebration and commemoration is an ideal time to focus on our glorious history and make firm resolve that we will not be just spectators but also participants in ensuring that the foundation principles are being preserved, safeguarded, and practiced in our own lives, with leadership, enthu siasm, and spirit.

Our faith, our conscience, our integrity, our industry, our hope—these can never be allowed to erode to mediocrity. Literally, the hope of those nations with the newly found freedoms depends on our continued example that this system works even better now than it has over our two hundred years of history.

Source: Elder L. Tom Perry
Address given 23 June 1991 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: America, Destiny; America, History; Compromise

A new nation had come into being at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It had been ordained of God to accomplish his divine purposes. The past and the future met within it, for the formation of the government of the United States was an event ordered of God for the bringing in of his Kingdom upon the earth. A republic is the highest form of political institution, De Tocqueville wrote, and this we know to be true. Our government was made up of different nationalities brought under one government and one flag. Such a republic had been unknown before in history.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1958

Topics: America, History

To understand the true value of the ideals of the American people when they think of their government of the United States, one must recall the character of the people who settled these shores in the seventeenth century. “They brought hither in their little ships, not money, not merchandise, no array of armed force, but they came freighted with religion, learning, law, and the Spirit of God. They stepped forth upon the shore, and a wild and frowning wilderness received them.” Strong in their faith in God, they began their combat with danger and hardship. Disease smote them, but they fainted not. At times they had nothing to eat but the roots of the plants they gathered. They first built houses for God and then for themselves. They established schools and developed a strong morality which was always their principal characteristic. They educated their children to a high faith in God. Villages began to smile; churches arose; industries multiplied; colleges were established; and every town had a democratic governent for all to take part. The states that were formed grew into a nation with noble, fundamental ideas of government. And so came our own United States, the most democratic government in the history of the world. What a glorious history our early country had, for religious people went not only to New England, but we have also the Quakers and the Methodists and other religious groups settling along the Atlantic Coast.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1955

Topics: America, History

Washington’s Greatest Trial

Perhaps the most gloomy, discouraging period of the American Revolution was when General Washington’s army was in Winter Quarters at Valley Forge. He had fewer than 10,000 men. Soldiers were thinly clad, some half naked, others with no clothing but tattered blankets wrapped around them. “So many were sick as the result of privation,” writes one commentator, “so many were without coats, blankets, hats, or shoes that one wonders how the army held together at all.” Critical and desperate as were these conditions, a greater trial and sorrow, I surmise, came to Washington when some of his friends such as John Adams and Richard Henry Lee turned against him; when General Gates insulted him by sending reports direct to Congress instead of to Washington, his superior officer. As carrion hawks hover around dying creatures, so in Washington’s dire calamity came men to seek to crush him—men who formed what has been called the “Conway Cabal,” a contemptible attempt to dishonor Washington and to supplant him by a self-asserting, arrogant schemer. This internal discord, and such disloyalty from one-time friends were more crushing than were the attacks of the opposing army.

Source: President David O. McKay
General Conference, October 1939

Topics: America, History; War, Revolutionary War

Our Government started out blessed with the rich inheritance of the ages. Its future lay before it, and that justice should rule the hearts of all its people, the Constitution of the United States was written. The influence of our Government has been felt time and time again among the nations of Europe, for they have looked to America for the solution of their problems.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1937

Topics: America, History

The peoples of the world have entered our gates, and have found here a new life and happiness. Never had they been so well cared for; never had they the chance to live and to look up to their God in hallowed feeling as they were given in this land. No nation of history has given homes to its people as has this our Country. Never has the wealth of land been so equitably distributed; never in all time, have so many people owned their own homes. With individual opportunity, there has gone quite naturally inequality. Inequality is a law of all social life, and to try to do away with inequality among men is to substitute tyranny for liberty.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1937

Topics: America, History

The Declaration of Independence expresses the power of the Creator in three different places, and in words that speak of the divine in man. It says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This document and the Constitution of our country in their very spirit recognize the divine truth that government should be the expression of all that is noblest and true in the life of man. In the settlements of the frontiers of America, groups of religious men carried the spirit of religion into the unconquered lands, and the very fabric of our government was made up of many beliefs in the ways of providence. America for this reason has a rich background of the ideals of human liberty. All through our history the people have held to the belief in the divine guidance of the Master. Yet when we weigh the influence of social conditions today, we may well fear that we are slowly discarding our faith in the directive hand of an all-wise providence. Can there be any nobler truth than that the Lord does rule in the affairs of men? Is his power not seen in the onward march of civilization? Yet are we coming to the destructive belief that man and not God must ultimately rule in the affairs of man. Is the wisdom of mn the only power that will solve our problems? At times, such a thought was prevalent in the days of ancient Israel, but the Lord through his prophets guided Israel...

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1936

Topics: America, History

The Prophet Isaiah once wrote: “Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn,” and the ancient Psalmist of Zion warned us when he said: “Remove not the ancient land-mark, which thy fathers have set.” I believe that the life of America depends upon the religion of America, and if this our government is to be preserved, it will be because America is pervaded, inspired, and controlled by the spirit of a faith in Almighty God. Our country was settled by people imbued by deep religious convictions. When the Pilgrim fathers came and landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, they drew up the Mayflower Compact which in part reads: “In the Name of God, Amen. We whose names are written, the loyal subjects of our Lord, King James, by the Grace of God King ... having undertaken for the glory of God, and the advancement of the Christian faith . . .” “In the name of God” those Pilgrim fathers braved the terrors of the deep to plant homes in America and to establish religious freedom. The Quakers came to Pennsylvania, the Catholics to Marland, and the Methodists to the Carolinas. James Oglethorpe who brought colonists to Georgia required that his people draw up a form of government based on the fundamentals that were given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai: the Ten Commandments. This nation must naturally be pervaded by a spiritual life, and we have today no more important duty than to inspire the youth with a true religious spirit. When the First Continental Congress met in Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia in September, 1774, Dr. Jacob Duche was called in to offer prayers, and as he prayed, John Adams of Massachusetts tells us that tears “gushed into the eyes of all present.”

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: America, History

A Land Of Promise

We, my brethren and sisters, are assembled here today in this historic building, in a city which we call Salt Lake, in a territory which we call Utah, a territory which forms one of the forty-eight federated states of our union, each state independent in its own sphere, but all bound together by constitutional law, which welds them into a single entity.

Only yesterday the ground upon which this building stands, in fact the entire area covered by the United States of America, was an uncultivated wilderness. The prophets of the Lord, centuries before, had predicted the existence of this land, before it was known to the people of the old world. They had outlined to us the establishment of this government of ours; they had declared that upon this land, which to them was a land choice above all others, there would be established a system of civil government, which would be a light to the world; a government to which would be gathered the remnant of the scattered house of Israel; a government in which men would enjoy equal rights under the law; a government in which men would act as their own conscience might prompt them to do—with this restriction, however, that in that which they did they must not infringe upon the rights of others or prevent them from exercising the agency which they themselves exercised.

Source: President Anthony W. Ivins
General Conference, October 1933

Topics: America, History; Heavenly Interest in Human Events; Rights

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