Quotes By LDS Prophet & Apostle Spencer W. Kimball
The commandments and standards of morality set by the Lord himself are under attack on every hand. There are false teachers everywhere using speech and pornographic literature, magazines, radio, TV, street talk—spreading heresies which break down moral standards.
| 1980–O:4, Spencer W. Kimball, Families Can Be Eternal
“The height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. There is no other limitation in either direction. And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish a dominion over himself will have no dominion over others, he who masters himself shall be king.”
| Improvement Era, June 1966, p. 525.
“The union of the sexes, husband and wife (and only husband and wife), was for the principal purpose of bringing children into the world. Sexual experiences were never intended by the Lord to be a mere plaything or merely to satisfy passions and lusts. We know of no directive from the Lord that proper sexual experience between husbands and wives need be limited totally to the procreation of children, but we find much evidence from Adam until now that no provision was ever made by the Lord for indiscriminate sex”
| "The Lord’s Plan for Men and Women,” Ensign, Oct. 1975, 4
[The Lord] asks us to rest from daily work. This means we should perform no labor that would keep us from giving our full attention to spiritual matters. The Lord told the Israelites, “thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, they manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor the cattle” (Exodus 20:10). Our prophets have told us that we should not shop, hunt, fish, attend sports events, or participate in similar activities on that day.
President Spencer W. Kimball cautioned, however, that if we merely lounge about doing nothing on the Sabbath, we are not keeping the day holy. The Sabbath calls for constructive thoughts and acts.
| (See Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], p. 170) — Gospel Principles, p. 141
“If the Lord was meek and lowly and humble, then to become humble one must do what He did in boldly denouncing evil, bravely advancing righteous works, courageously meeting every problem, becoming the master of himself and the situations about him and being near oblivious to personal credit. . . .Humble and meek properly suggest virtues, not weaknesses. They suggest a consistent mildness of temper and an absence of wrath and passion. Humility suggests no affectation, no bombastic actions. It is not turbid nor grandiloquent. It is not servile submissiveness. It is not cowed nor frightened. No shadow or the shaking of a leaf terrorizes it…How does one get humble? To me, one must constantly be reminded of his dependence. On whom dependent? On the Lord. How remind one’s self? By real, constant, worshipful, grateful prayer.”
| “Humility,” BYU Speeches of the Year
“The repenting sinner must suffer for his sins, but this suffering has a different purpose than punishment or payment. Its purpose is to change.”
“Let us get our instruments tightly strung and our melodies sweetly sung. Let us not die with our music still in us. Let us rather use this precious mortal probation to move confidently and gloriously upward toward the eternal life which God our Father gives to those who keep His commandments.”
| The Miracle of Forgiveness (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1969), 17.
“Upon practicing the law of the fast, one finds a personal well-spring of power to overcome self-indulgence and selfishness.”
| In Conference Report, Apr. 1978, 121.
“Our goal is to achieve eternal life. That is the greatest goal in the world. We are not opposed to goals. We do not want stake and full-time mission presidents to establish quotas for the missionaries. Rather, we expect them to inspire missionaries to set their own goals, and make them high enough to challenge their very best efforts, and work to achieve them. … We look to you to teach these principles and follow up.”
| President Kimball’s Vision of Missionary Work
“When you look on the dictionary for the most important word, do you know what it is? It could be ‘remember.’ Because all of you have made covenants – to know what to do and you know how to do it – our greatest need is to remember. That is why everyone goes to sacrament meeting every Sabbath day.”