Are we a political people? Yes, very political indeed. But what party do you belong to or would you vote for? I will tell you whom we will vote for: we will vote for the man who will sustain the principles of civil and religious liberty, the man who knows the most and who has the best heart and brain for a statesman; and we do not care a farthing whether he is a whig, a democrat, \x{2026} a republican, \x{2026} or anything else. These are our politics.

Source: Brigham Young
DBY, p358

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Whom do we want to fill our public offices? We want the best men that we can find for governor, president and statesmen, and for every other office of trust and responsibility; and when we have obtained them, we will pray for them and give them our faith [trust] and influence to do the will of God and to preserve themselves and the people in truth and righteousness.

Source: Brigham Young
DBY, p358

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A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

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And I hope with all my soul that the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be loyal in their very hearts and souls, to the principles of the Constitution of our country. From them we have derived the liberty that we enjoy. They have been the means of guaranteeing to the foreigner that has come within our gates, and to the native born, and to all the citizens of this country, the freedom and liberty that we possess. We cannot go back upon such principles as these, we may go back upon those who fail to execute the law as they should. We may be dissatisfied with the decision of judges, and may desire to have them removed out of their places. But the law provides ways and means for all these things to be done under the Constitution of our country, and it is better for us to abide the evils that we have than to fly to greater evils that we know not what the results will be. All we have to do if an officer is not executing the duties of his office righteously is to impeach him or wait till his term of office is out, and then shelve him in the lawful way.

Source: President Joseph F. Smith
General Conference, October 1912

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The Prophet Joseph Smith declared it will be the elders of Israel who will step forward to help save the Constitution, not the Church. And have we elders been warned? Yes, we have. And have we elders been given the guide lines? Yes indeed, we have. And besides, if the Church should ever inaugurate a program, who do you think would be in the forefront to get it moving? It would not be those who were sitting on the sidelines prior to that time or those who were appeasing the enemy. It would be those choice spirits who, not waiting to be “commanded in all things,” used their own free will, the counsel of the prophets and the Spirit of the Lord as guidelines and who entered the battle “in a good cause” and brought to pass much righteousness in freedom’s cause.

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, April 1965

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Religion is the most potent power in life. Spiritual development and moral integrity are fundamental in the lives not only of the Latter-day Saints but of all who would build a community that will contribute to the safety and advancement of our republic or of any other nation. President Calvin Coolidge truly said that “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 man. 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 reforms which society in these days is seeking will come as a result of our religious convictions, or they will not come at all. Peace, justice, humanity, charity—these cannot be legislated into being. They are the results of a Divine Grace.”

Source: Elder David O. McKay
General Conference, April 1934

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Past material advances have been the fruit of our freedom—our free enterprise system—our American way of life—our God-given freedom of choice. The progress of the future must stem from this same basic freedom. Because our forefathers fought for the ideal of freedom; because our fathers preserved that ideal through our free enterprise system under our God-given free agency; because they were willing to make religion the vital force of daily living, all of us have climbed through the years to new heights of well-being and inner strength.

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, October 1958

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I cannot understand why we do not learn a lesson from the history of other great civilizations of Babylonia, Greece, and Rome, and realize that the cycle of civilization begins with abject slavery or bondage and moves upward to a spiritual faith, from a spiritual faith to moral courage, from moral courage to freedom, from freedom to abundance, and begins to descend from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to apathy, from apathy to dependency and from dependency back to the point of beginning.

You can calculate our own position in this cycle today, as we are in a period of selfishness and apathy which is rapidly phasing into dependence. The only thing that will stop us from returning to the point of beginning will be a renewal of spiritual faith and moral courage, that we may regain our freedom and abundance.

Source: The Honorable James B. Utt
U.S. Representative from the 28th District of California.
This item is from his Washington Report, August 7, 1958.

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He that will not work, shall not eat, for the labours of 30 or 40 honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain 150 idle loiters... When our people were fed out of the common store and labored jointly, glad was he could slip from his labours or slumber—neither cared they for the increase—presuming that howsoever the harvest prospered, the general store must maintain them—so that we reaped not so much corne from 30 men as now 3 or 4 doe provide for themselves.

Source: Captain John Smith
(1580-1631)—of the Jamestown settlement

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