“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”
Leadership
LDS Quotes on Leadership
“Any excuse, no matter how valid, always weakens character.”
“We humans have a lamentable tendency to spend more time theorizing reasons behind human suffering, than working to alleviate human suffering, and in imagining a heaven above, than creating a heaven in our homes and communities.”
“Effective teaching is the very essence of leadership in the church. Eternal life will come only as men and women are taught with such effectiveness that they change and discipline their lives. They cannot be coerced into righteousness or into heaven. They must be led, and that means teaching.”
| "How to Be a Teacher When Your Role as a Leader Requires You to Teach"
“In the performance of our responsibilities, I have learned that when we heed a silent prompting and act upon it without delay, our Heavenly Father will guide our footsteps and bless our lives and the lives of others. I know of no experience more sweet or feelings more precious than to heed a prompting, only to discover that the Lord has answered another’s prayer through you.”
| General Conference, October 5, 2002
“To be effective Church leaders, we must learn this critical lesson: leadership in the Church is not so much about directing others as it is about our willingness to be directed by God.”
“I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by him. I am fearful that they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God…Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not.”
Mark well those who speak evil of the Lord’s anointed, for they speak from impure hearts. Only the “pure in heart” see the “God” or the divine in man and accept our leaders and accept them as prophets of the Living God. . . .
I want to bear you my testimony that the experience I have had has taught me that those who criticize the leaders of this Church are showing signs of a spiritual sickness which, unless curbed, will bring about eventually spiritual death. I want to bear my testimony as well that those who in public seek by their criticism to belittle our leaders or bring them into disrepute, will bring upon themselves more hurt than upon those whom they seek thus to malign. I have watched over the years, and I have read of the history of many of those who fell away from this Church, and I want to bear testimony that no apostate who ever left this Church ever prospered as an influence in his community thereafter.
| Conference Report, October 1947, p. 67
“If you want to get the spirit of your office and calling as a new president of a quorum, a new high [councilor], a new bishop [or, I might say, a Relief Society president]—try fasting for a period. I don’t mean just missing one meal, then eating twice as much the next meal. I mean really fasting, and praying during that period. It will do more to give you the real spirit of your office and calling and permit the Spirit to operate through you than anything I know.”
| The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson (1988), 331–32.
“If you were to select just two or three individuals in your life who have been most influential, what specifically did they do that was most helpful to you at a critical or important time in your life? On reflecting for a few moments, you are apt to conclude that such a person really cared for you, that he or she taught you something you needed to know. Reflect now upon your own performance.”