Topic: Freedom, Matches 23 quotes.

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

Grateful For Our Country

I am grateful, also, as I return to this country, for our country itself. I am grateful for its territorial aloofness from the rest of the world. Even with the most modern, destructive weapons of war, we are almost immune. I am grateful for our political international aloofness and I pray our Heavenly Father that we shall never lose the security which comes from minding our own business and remaining aloof from the quarrels and the pettiness of the politics of the world.

I am grateful for our economic sufficiency that we can, within our own borders, produce all that we need for our daily lives, and the most of what we need for our luxury. The need of other great powers for this sufficiency threatens to bring sometime in the future another devastating struggle.

I am grateful to my Heavenly Father for our free institutions, for the liberty which we have, the freedom of the press, the freedom of religion, freedom to do as we wish within the law. I am grateful that the great principle behind our system of government is that we may do anything which the law does not forbid. There are other systems in the world in which the individual may do that only which the law permits, and between those two great principles lies the difference between freedom and slavery. I am grateful for this, my brethren and sisters, far beyond my power to tell.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, October 1937

Topics: Freedom; Politics, International

When the government of the United States was finally organized under the God-inspired Constitution, it was the result of toil and blood; and faith in the providences of God. The age- long barriers of class were done away with, and those founders declared that here in this nation, there should be no slave; there should be no king; nor master; nor subject. The fathers of the republic said to us: “We are all children of God, free and equal.”

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, October 1936

Topics: Freedom

What is freedom? What is liberty? Does it mean license to do evil? No, indeed it does not. To be free means to liberate ourselves from the bondage of sin. We, in this country, boast of our human liberty and we have great reason to be proud of the liberty that we enjoy under our Constitution; but after all is said and done it is only a measure of civil liberty, but the greatest measure to be found among all the governments of the world. We sometimes boast of being in the land of the free, the home of the brave. Nevertheless, we are not free until we have overcome evil—until we liberate ourselves from the bondage of sin.

Source: Elder Rulon S. Wells
General Conference, April 1930

Topics: Freedom

Of all the individual rights which our forefathers handed down in their legacy to us, none perhaps has been greater nor more fruitful to our society than the traditional right of every American . . . to use and enjoy his individual freedom; and the incentive to develop to the highest possible degree his personal creative talents.

Source: Irving S. Olds
The Thousand Miles of Lao-Tse

Topics: Freedom

This human liberty for which these mighty men, to whom I have alluded, have struggled, great and glorious though it is, is after all only a measure of civil liberty. There is a greater freedom to which we should aspire; for, let it be known that even in this great and glorious republic, the greatest one that ever existed upon the face of the earth, where the greatest measure of human liberty is meted out to our Father’s children, in this land of the free and home of the brave, we are not free. “The whole world lieth in sin and groaneth under darkness and under the bondage of sin,” but the truth that emanated from God, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that was proclaimed in that primeval day shall make us free indeed if we will only receive and obey it.

Source: Elder Rulon S. Wells
General Conference, October 1926

Topics: Christianity; Freedom

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