Topic: Morality, Matches 55 quotes.

The real test of the strength of civilization is in the moral capacity of the rank and file of the citizens to give up the pleasures of the present for greater rewards in the future. This quality is the foundation of both moral and spiritual character. The social security of a nation is based on the character of the citizens, not on the amount of material comforts the government may bestow upon them. Hard work and sacrifice make men strong. Ease and gifts from any source are destructive to efficiency, character, and citizenship. Social security is in the character of the citizens and hence must come from within. Social security can not be bestowed from without.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, October 1936

Topics: Morality; Security

We all must discover the beauties of the inner light, which is the divine gift of God to man. It is the divine spirit that really makes life fine and noble. Our government can only live as it produces good citizens who know that the Golden Rule is still golden, and that the Sermon on the Mount and the Ten Commandments are still the guiding forces of morality both for the individual and for society.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1936

Topics: Morality

Every reform must be vested with sacredness, and a nation that is great is not incompatible with righteousness. The spirit of progress and nationality must be related to the divine purposes. There is a call of God to the nations as well as there is to men. The nation which has the bravest, the most trustworthy, the most thoroughly developed conscience will have the right of way in the onward march of civilization.

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1936

Topics: Morality

What we need today is a group of high-souled men, men of vision and high morals, to put our nation in order, and to bring back that old-fashioned conscience of the nation, which recognizes the fact that the highest laws are the laws of God. Every man should put himself clearly and openly into some relationship of responsibility, for we are today beset with the mob spirit, which always acts apart from the organization of government. This is why the mob spirit is wrong. We should honor our past in the present; our dead in the living. What I want to hold up before us all is the conscience of our nation and government. Moral integrity, moral purposes, moral restraint are the necessities of the hour. If these things can be brought about, the nations of the world will have this to say of us: “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” Ideals must be established in the minds of the rising generation. While we realize that the age in which we live is new, the youth will never find anything more true and noble than the spirit of the pioneer America, when the first impulse was the joy of enterprise, initiative, and newly awakened powers. Honesty of purpose must be re-established; honesty of endeavor, honesty of word, honesty in our relationship with our fellow-men. “Look unto the rock, whence ye are hewn,” wrote Isaiah of old; and Solomon in his wisdom said: “Remove not the ancient land-mark, which thy fathers have set.”

We must hark back to the finer fundamentals of life, we must make every law and principle of right effective in our very lives. The end of the State is not to live, but to live nobly, and this can only be done as we realize the truth of truths, that the teachings of the Master must become the guiding stars of our lives. “For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.”

Source: Elder Levi Edgar Young
General Conference, April 1936

Topics: Christianity; Culture; Honesty; Morality

In Need Of Convictions

Convictions are the great need of the people of the world today. Men need to be convinced of something. They need religious convictions, and it is not, in the first instance so important what those convictions may be, looking to the peace and ordered condition of the world. The people of the world need convictions regarding righteousness in civic and political life; they need convictions on the eternal verities of right and wrong. Great masses of people everywhere in the world are wandering aimlessly in their religious, in their intellectual, in their social, and in their civic lives, without any guiding principles; “every wind of doctrine” strains the moorings that have held them for generations.

This must be changed.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, April 1935

Topics: Christianity; Morality

The Flight from Values

Strong, cohesive societies are based on even stronger belief systems sustained by the people as they make their daily fundamental political, economic, and cultural choices. Over the ages, people creating strong civilizations made such choices not because they felt they could be “proven” correct (science barely existed), but because they believed their choices were right and arose naturally from their common belief system. Today, however, we seem to have abandoned the idea that a common belief system is necessary at all—a result, in part, of a general decline in faith, and the moral strength derived from it. Instead, we like to think that all values are equal or “relevant”—that just about anything goes. This attitude has arisen not from any deeply honest confrontation with past or present values but from a flight from values altogether.

Source: William D. Gairdner
The Trouble with Canada

Topics: Morality; Society

Far-reaching Results

I am not willing to take it for granted that these abuses must be. They are too serious and their results too far reaching to go unchallenged. I fear them, not only because they are costly to the public treasury, the drain on which is a matter of deep concern to every American, but for the more important reason which I have heretofore indicated, that the practice of “sponging” on the government is perverting the finest virtues of American citizenship—self-respect, self-reliance and integrity. Furthermore, I cannot but conclude that this distortion to the morale of our people makes fertile ground for the seeds of disloyalty and anarchy which those inimical to our form of government are ever seeking to sow.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Government, Spending; Morality; Welfare

Basis Of Mutual Confidence

Common honesty is the basis of mutual confidence. If we lose confidence in each other we are lost. We can’t trust those who cheat the government. It is as dishonest as it is to cheat the Church or each other. No one can deceive and cheat and be a Christian. He may be called a Christian, but he is not one. Misrepresentation, hypocrisy and deceit are as repugnant to the Gospel as is error to truth, for the Gospel is truth.

Source: Elder Stephen L. Richards
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Honesty; Morality

Importance of Honesty

Reference has already been made to the last Article of our Faith, that refers largely to the cardinal virtues, which are just as much a part of the Gospel and a part of our lives, as any principle. “We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men,” and so forth. This tenet expresses the importance of practicing these fundamental virtues. Honesty lies at the very foundation of our individual and community life, our civilization, our organizations of government, and the membership of the Church. If we live the Gospel we can not be anything but honest; if we are good citizens of this nation we can not properly be anything but honest. If honesty is lacking in the government, then it will gradually disintegrate. If graft, if racketeering, if other dishonest practices prevail, then there is bound to be lack of confidence, and there will develop an increasing attitude of disrespect for law and for those who are called to administer the laws.

Source: Elder Sylvester Q. Cannon
General Conference, October 1934

Topics: Honesty; Morality

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