I pray for the people of the world; not only for the Latter-day Saints, but I pray God’s blessings upon every loyal, patriotic man and woman that is endeavoring to do right, and to uphold the laws of the countries where they reside. I pray God’s blessings upon the President of these United States of America. I thank God for the loyalty and the patriotism of the Latter-day Saints. I thank God that we believe that the constitution of our country was given to us under the inspiration of the Living God, and that the Lord supported George Washington and the patriot fathers of this country.

Source: President Heber J. Grant
General Conference, October 1924

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I do not believe that in this great country of ours which has been so lauded during this conference, there will ever be a satisfactory upholding of the Constitution, a decent conformity to laws and statutes and ordinances unless there e at the basis of all patriotism and loyalty to country, a deep-seated conscious reverence for the God of the land. It may seem to some of my fellow citizens an almost fanatic view to take that religion is so inseparably associated with the inception of this great government and its existence as to form an integral part of the loyalty and devotion of true citizens of the State; but I assert it nevertheless. I believe America to be a Christian country. I believe the principles which are set forth in her fundamental laws to be derived from, consciously, the Savior of the world. His precepts, his principles of truth and living, have been set forth by the founders and the fathers in our laws and statutes; and America, in order to continuously and satisfactorily fill her great mission as a mighty nation, must conform to those fundamental laws and principles of truth, in my humble judgment. Reverence for the Lord does not bring forth the class of men and women who today assail the fundamental laws of this land. The who are designated as the Reds, the Anarchists, those who are inimical to our established institutions, I venture, could they all be found out and analyzed, would not be men who love God and who revere his name and who acknowledge his power and his supremacy in the earth. The loyal citizens in this Country, in my humble opinion, are to be found among the God-fearing, God-loving people who still trust him and honor him, who recognize his great providence in the inception and growth of this mighty country; and when reverence for God fades and gives way, loyalty, patriotism, devotion to country, will likewise vanish.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1924

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All Institutions And Interests Dependent On The Stability Of Government

The welfare of the Church, and every other interest and institution of our country is dependent upon the stability of our civil government, by which our every interest is controled. There is nothing which we call our own, not even our lives, which is not subject to its demands. However much we may resist or say we will not, it compels submission.

Our government can be no better than its citizenship, since the men who frame and execute the laws are chosen from among the body of the people, and consequently reflect the character of the majority of the electorate.

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

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Some eighty years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States in /Savings and Loan Association/ vs. /Topeka /(22 Law. Ed. 461) declared “to lay, with one hand, the power of government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals . . . is nonetheless a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation.” Also in those days before it became legal, and even respectable, to forcibly redistribute the earnings of some citizens in order to secure the vote and favor of others, the forgotten clause of the Fifth Amendment was as carefully adhered to as is another clause today. I refer to the clause which says, “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”

Source: W. C. Mullendore
If We Behave Wisely, The Freeman, January 1957, p.8

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For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that’s the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer?

Source: C. S. Lewis
God in the Dock, p314

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Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

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I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between *economy and liberty* or *profusion and servitude*. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, ... [we] must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, [and] give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers.... This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins indeed the *hellum omnium in omnia* which some philosophers, observing [it] to be so general in this world, have mistaken ... for the natural instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

Source: Thomas Jefferson
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 25:39

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The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Source: Thomas Jefferson
“Notes on Virginia, Jefferson the President: First Term 1801-1805,”
Dumas Malon, Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1970, p. 191

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