Quotes By LDS Prophet & Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley
Gordon B. Hinckley was an Apostle and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served as the 15th President of the Church from 1995 until his death in 2008. He was known for his emphasis on missionary work, the building of temples, and the strengthening of the Church’s youth programs.
“There is something almost sacred about a great library because it represents the preservation of the wisdom, the learning, and the pondering of men and women of all the ages, accumulated under one roof.”
| Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
“There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share great minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book.”
| Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
“Under the plan of heaven, the husband and wife walk side by side as companions, neither one ahead of the other, but a daughter of God and a son of God walking side by side. Let your families be families of love and peace and happiness.”
“How sweet is the assurance, how comforting is the peace that come from the knowledge that if we marry right and live right, our relationship will continue, notwithstanding the certainty of death and the passage of time. Men may write love songs and sing them. They may yearn and hope and dream. But all of this will be only a romantic longing unless there is an exercise of authority that transcends the powers of time and death.”
“I am satisfied that if we would look for the virtues in one another and not the vices, there would be much more of happiness in the homes of our people. There would be far less of divorce, much less of infidelity, much less of anger and rancor and quarreling. There would be more of forgiveness, more of love, more of peace, more of happiness. This is as the Lord would have it.”
| Living Worthy of the Girl You Will Someday Marry
“Of course, all in marriage is not bliss. . . . The remedy for most marriage stress is not in divorce. It is in repentance. It is not in separation. It is in simple integrity that leads a man to square up his shoulders and meet his obligations. It is found in the Golden Rule. . . .There must be a willingness to overlook small faults, to forgive, and then to forget. There must be a holding of one’s tongue. Temper is a vicious and corrosive thing that destroys affection and casts out love. . . . There may be now and again a legitimate cause for divorce. I am not one to say that it is never justified. But I say without hesitation that this plague among us, which seems to be growing everywhere, is not of God, but rather is the work of the adversary of righteousness and peace and truth.”
| What God hath joined together. Ensign, 21(5), 72–74.
“Knowledge without labor is profitless. Knowledge with labor is genius.”
| Stand a Little Taller
As you know, we have recently issued a booklet on child abuse. We deplore this terrible thing which seems to be growing in the world. Of course, it is not new. It has gone on for generations. It is serious, and we so regard it. Sexual abuse of children on the part of fathers, or anyone else, has long been a cause for excommunication from the Church. No man who has been ordained to the priesthood of God can with impunity indulge in either spouse or child abuse. Such activity becomes an immediate repudiation of his right to hold and exercise the priesthood and to retain membership in the Church.
I am glad that there is a growing public awareness of this insidious evil. The exploitation of children, or the abuse of one’s spouse, for the satisfaction of sadistic desires is sin of the darkest hue.
Permit me to read from another letter. Said the writer: “My husband is a good man with many outstanding qualities and character traits, but underneath it all there is a strong streak of authoritarianism. … His volatile temper flares up often enough to remind me of all the potential ugliness of which he is capable.
“President Hinckley, … please remind the brethren that the physical and verbal abuse of women is INEXCUSABLE, NEVER ACCEPTABLE, AND A COWARDLY WAY OF DEALING WITH DIFFERENCES, especially and particularly despicable if the abuser is a priesthood holder.”
“Any man in this church who abuses his wife, who demeans her, who insults her, who exercises unrighteous dominion over her is unworthy to hold the priesthood. In the marriage companionship there is neither inferiority nor superiority. The woman does not walk ahead of the man, neither does the man walk ahead of the woman. They walk side by side as a son and daughter of God on an eternal journey.”
| General Conference Priesthood Session, April 6, 2002