Topic: Government, Power, Matches 12 quotes.

We loudly acclaim our devotion to, and love for American ideals, and pose as patriotic, law-abiding citizens, while the very men who enact our laws, and are appointed to enforce them, too often violate the law, and the trust reposed in them, as if they were exempt from that which they require others to obey. Our trusted agents who have the management of our public affairs, too often prove themselves to be rogues and swindlers by uniting with the men whom they profess to detect and prosecute, to rob us of that which they are employed to protect.

Men, profound in their knowledge of the law, too often use their great learning, not to uphold and magnify the law, but to pervert it, and find means by which we may avoid its just requirements. Self confessed criminals, guilty of the most heinous crimes, premeditated in their execution, are turned loose upon defenseless, law-abiding communities, to continue their criminal practices upon those whom the law is designed to protect.

Source: President Anthony W. Ivins
General Conference, October 1924

Topics: Government, Loss of Freedom; Government, Power

Provision Made For Three Branches Of Government

Wisely did our forefathers organize our national institution with three different, distinct departments, each one to be entirely separate from and independent of the other two. These three departments are the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial. These able and farseeing patriots and statesmen thus made these three separate and distinct departments the cornerstone of our republic and the guarantee that in our land there shall never be a dictator.

Source: Elder Richard R. Lyman
General Conference, October 1940

Topics: Checks and Balances; Dictatorships; Government, Power

Suppose this people inhabiting these mountains are broken off entirely from the nations of the world, rendering no allegiance to any earthly power combined or isolated; free to make laws, to obey them, or to break them; free to act, to choose, and to refuse, and, in every sense of the word, to do as they please, without any fixed order of government whatever; and they wish a Constitution—a system of government for mutual protection and advancement in the principles of right, to be framed according to the best wisdom that can be found in this community;—I say, let them govern themselves by a Republican system of government, selecting a man from their midst to preside over them. And whom should they select to fill so important a station? The best man they can find. Should they keep him in office only four years? Should they make a clause in their Constitution that a President shall serve at most for only two terms without a vacation in his services? That is an item that should not be found in the Constitution of the United States, nor in the constitution made by this or any other people. We should select the best man we could find, and centre our feelings upon him, and sustain him as our President, dictator, lawgiver, controller, and guide in a national capacity, and in every other capacity wherein he is a righteous example. Though we find as good a man as there is in the nation, yet we should not lay facilities before him to become evil, were he so disposed. Great care should be exercised to guard against placing such a power at the command of any mortal.

Source: Brigham Young
Journal of Discourses, 7:11

Topics: Government, Dictatorship; Government, Power; Term Limits

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