Topic: Principles, Matches 6 quotes.

Speaking of philosophy, I must tell another little story, for I was almost buried up in it while I was in Paris. I was walking about one day in the Jardin des Plantes—a splendid garden. There they had a sort of exceedingly light cake; it was so thin and light that you could blow it away, and you could eat all day of it, and never be satisfied. Somebody asked me what the name of that was. I said, I don’t know the proper name, but in the absence of one, I can give it a name—I will call it philosophy, or fried froth, which you like. It is so light you can blow it away, eat it all day, and at night be as far from being satisfied as when you began.

There are a great many false principles in the world, and as I said before, whether you examine their religion, their philosophy, their politics, or their national policy, you will find it a mess of complete baby work, there is nothing substantial about it, nothing to take hold of.

Source: John Taylor
Journal of Discourses, Vol.1, p.27, August 22, 1852

Topics: Principles

Let me say, gentlemen, that if we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, if we and they shall maintain just, moral sentiments and such righteous convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes at our country; but if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions at morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

Source: Daniel Webster
from his very last public address, made before the
Historical Society of New York, in 1852,

Topics: Christianity; Morality; Principles

In reading recently the Constitution of the United States, I thought of the eloquent words of James Russell Lowell when he was at the court of France. Guizot, the French statesman, said to him: “How long will the Government of the United States endure?” And the reply of James Russell Lowell was: “Just so long as the ideals of the founders of this government endure.” This incident has been told in the remarkable letters of the great statesman Guizot, and it is something for us to remember.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, October 1923

Topics: Principles; US Constitution, Threats to

We shall not build love of country by taking away from our youth the principles which made us strong—thrift, initiative, self-reliance, and an overriding sense of duty to God and to man.

A terrible price has been paid by those who have gone before us, this that we might have the blessings of liberty and peace. I stood not long ago at Valley Forge, where George Washington and his ragged army spent the winter of 1776. As I did so, I thought of a scene from Maxwell Anderson’s play in which Washington looks on a little group of his soldiers, shoveling the cold earth over a dead comrade, and says grimly, “This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.”

Source: Elder Gordon B. Hinckley
General Conference, October 1965

Topics: Freedom, Price of; Principles

I recall a sentence from a magazine editorial of not so long ago, in which the writer asked the question, after addressing himself to the world in general and to the men and women of America in particular: “Are there any principles for which you would stand unflinchingly?” Before asking this clinching question, he invited attention to the many acts of expediency and of compromise, and to the many motives which have prompted many actions and many decisions on the national and international scene. “Are there any principles for which we would stand unflinchingly?” This suggests a series of questions which we might well ask ourselves:

Is there any principle for which we would give up our comfort, our convenience?

Is there any principle for which we would give up some of our appetites and habits?

Is there any principle for which we would give up popularity?

Is there any principle for which we would give up our time, or our property?

Is there any principle for which we would give up being elected to public office?

Is there any principle for which we would give up life itself?

Fortunately generations of patriotic Americans and generations of members of this Church have answered these questions affirmatively many times over, and would again, I have no doubt. But so rapid have been the changes of the years in which we live, and so confusing have they been at times, that I am sure principles have been confused with some other things. And I am afraid we have sometimes let ourselves be over-impressed by the appeal of the word “change,” without discriminating as between good changes and bad changes. We have sometimes let “change” come to be synonymous with “progress,” which it is not. It may be, but is not necessarily.

Source: Elder Richard L. Evans
General Conference, October 1946

Topics: Principles

Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberality and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government. There are only two main theories of government in the world. One rests on righteousness and the other on force. One appeals to reason, the other appeals to the sword. One is exemplified in a republic, the other is represented by a despotism.

The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of law for the virtue of men. Of course we can help to restrain the vicious and furnish a fair degree of security and protection by legislation and police control, but the real reform which society in these days is seeking will come as a result of religious convictions, or they will not come at all. Peace, justice, charity—these cannot be legislated into being. They are the result of Divine Grace.

Source: President Calvin Coolidge

Topics: Morality; Principles

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