Topic: America, Heritage, Matches 49 quotes.

Can you understand the way God has worked? And if you do, will you join me this day in committing yourself to preach the message of the Lord’s glorious achievement in America and to teach it as missionaries wherever the opportunity allows? This is a time when you and I can afford to be patriotic, in the best sense of that term. There is reason to be proud that we live in an established land that has been conditioned by the Lord so that his gospel could be restored. The purpose of America was to provide a setting wherein that was possible. All else takes its power from that one great, central purpose. May I commend to you Mark E. Petersen’s book The Great Prologue (Deseret Book Co., 1975)? Read it in connection with your scriptures and receive greater light on our history and its purpose.

Source: Elder Paul H. Dunn
General Conference, October 1975

Topics: America, Heritage

The question might well be asked, Why does freedom need to be restored as a forerunner to a new dispensation of the gospel of Jesus Christ? The answer is a simple one, for well the Lord knows that without the spirit of freedom in the souls of men, there could be no willing response to the gospel plan. For it is in the culture of freedom and the use of agency in that freedom that men come to know the difference between good and evil. This progress leads to yearnings in the hearts of good men, and eventually to gospel dispensations. This is the pattern to be noted down through the era of the historical writings.

Source: Elder Alvin R. Dyer
General Conference, April 1972

Topics: America, Heritage

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

Source: John Adams

Topics: America, Heritage

He [George Washington] was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man . . . . It may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.

Source: Thomas Jefferson
Personal letter to Dr. Walter Jones
Monticello, January 2, 1814.

Topics: America, Heritage

Why America Was Discovered And This Nation Founded.

If there is one thing I am proud of, it is that I am a Latter-day Saint, or one who professes the principles of a Latter-day Saint; and, next to that, I am proud of being an American. I love my country, I love its institutions, and desire with my whole heart that our glorious nation shall go on to the fulfilment of its God-given destiny.

I believe God inspired Columbus to discover this land, that a nation might rise and flourish here—a nation dedicated to freedom and equal rights, including the right to worship God in obedience to the dictates of conscience; and I believe that this nation was founded that the great work of God might come forth and not be crushed out by the tyranny of men.

I believe, also, that what God has committed to us, both as a Church and as a Nation, we owe to the rest of mankind, so far as they can be induced by peaceful persuasion to accept our principles. This Church has a mission to evangelize the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, “the perfect law of liberty;” and I have always dreamed that our Nation has a mission not merely to receive into its bosom the outcast, the refugee, the oppressed of other nations, but also to leaven with American principles the rest of the world.

Source: Elder Orson F. Whitney
General Conference, October 1919

Topics: America, Heritage

Still, the great question remained: were these American people in this new American nation really capable of fulfilling their personal, ethical, private as well as public responsibilities, especially as they believed them to be God-given responsibilities?

Through their knowledge of history, their commitment to the moral values and traditions in which they believed, and through their own experience, the American founding fathers knew that a morally corrupt people could never enjoy the luxury of freedom. Their teacher, the great English philosopher, Edmund Burke, had said it best:

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites [May I repeat that: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites.”] . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”16

16. Edmund Burke, The Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 4 (Waltham, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1866), pp. 51-52.

Source: Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Address given 30 June 1996 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: America, Heritage; Morality

Clearly the key to true liberty lay in the human heart, and today that means our hearts—yours and mine and our children and our childrens’ children—as well as those of Pilgrims, Puritans, and the original founding fathers.

As Alexander Hamilton said so beautifully: “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments and musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, [upon the soul of man.] . . . The Supreme Being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beautifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by which he could discern and pursue such things as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety.“29

So America was founded on principles of personal virtue and private morality that would give meaning and vitality to those more technical political principles of constitutional government with its executive, legislative, and judicial branches of activity. Undergirding all of this was the commitment of the individual citizen as well as that of the elected official. From such a personal devotion would come the determination to live together in peace and liberty and safety and freedom. These are blessings we want for ourselves, our children, our neighborhoods, and our world. They are very much the blessings for which this nation was settled and for which that initial War of Independence was fought.

29. Alexander Hamilton, “The Farmer Refuted,” (February, 1775); John C. Hamilton, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 2 (New York: Charles S. Francis, 1851), p. 80.

Source: Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Address given 30 June 1996 at the Freedom Festival at Provo, UT.

Topics: America, Heritage; Morality

When I think of these wise men, George Washington and Jefferson and Franklin, I think of men who were servants of God, raised up for the purpose of establishing the Constitution and establishing this great government. Thomas Jefferson was endowed from on high with prophetic power. If you will study the Doctrines of Democracy as advocated by Thomas Jefferson one hundred thirty years ago, you will find that in many respects we have departed from the principles that made us a great and powerful nation.

Source: Elder Joseph L. Wirthlin
General Conference, October 1946

Topics: America, Heritage; Christianity; Government, Downfall

Blessings Of Democracy

I hope that the membership of this Church will not be deceived into thinking that other plans, other forms of government, other systems of direction whatsoever, are desirable. I want to say to you without any hesitation that no form of government in the world can be compared favorably with the government God gave to us. This is his plan. Then after giving us our civil government, preparing the way for governing ourselves, if you will, he organized the Church and gave it the name of his Beloved Son, and then directed that we share that information with all his children. What a commission, a divine commission!

Source: President George Albert Smith
General Conference, April 1947

Topics: America, Heritage; Heavenly Interest in Human Events

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