Topic: Self Control, Matches 3 quotes.

The world needs the help of those who have recognized and received the gospel of the kingdom. The world needs their inspiration and active participation in the affairs of life. We are an inspired people. That I know as well as I know that I live. We are responsible for the proper use of this inspiration. This inspiration is not confined to our spiritual lives but carries over into all temporal responsibilities, and included therein is our moral, our civic, our political, our social, our financial responsibilities. We stand ready to exercise this divine guidance together with the power of our priesthood in behalf of a neighbor, as well as in our own behalf. We look upon the children of our Heavenly Father as our brothers and sisters, no matter where they live, or what they believe, or what their ancestry may be. We cannot expect to do our full duty as we are inspired to do unless we can live and work in an environment of love, of peace of freedom—freedom at home and throughout the world.

Plato has put into words that the spirit of freedom is not a matter of laws and constitutions. "Only he is free," Plato says, "who realizes the divine order within himself, the true standard by which a man can steer himself." And I say true standards, ideals that lift life up, mark the way of true progress. Such ideals followed will never permit our light to be extinguished.

Pericles said: "But we regard him who holds aloof from public affairs as useless." They called the useless man a "private" citizen, idiots from which our word idiot comes. The citizens of the kingdom of God should set the pattern for the citizens of the kingdoms of men.

A reflective Roman traveling in Greece in the second century, A.D. said, "None ever throve under democracy save the Athenians. They had self-control and were law-abiding." That is what Athenian education aimed at, to produce men who would be able to maintain a self-governed state because they were themselves self-governed, self-controlled, self-reliant. It is said of the Athenians, "We yield to none in independence of spirit and complete self-reliance."

Source: Elder Henry D. Moyle
General Conference, April 1959

Topics: Citizenship; Public Duty; Self Control

Civil Liberty vs. Appetites

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be of it without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Source: Edmund Burke

Topics: Self Control

In the time of our peace and prosperity, we may be tempted to be indulgent with ourselves. All over the world, I believe there is a growing spirit, even in the hearts of many leaders, to become careless, to become more or less accustomed to the new order of things that obtain. This, after all, is most threatening to the life, to the peace of the people and to the stability of even governments themselves.

Source: Elder Melvin J. Ballard
General Conference, April 1927

Topics: Self Control

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