LDS Quotes on Morality
“In all humility and sincerity we must admit a power higher than ourselves from whom is derived a positive moral code that will give our lives significance and purpose. We also must remember once and for all that honesty, respect, and honor as such are not for sale on the market block. They are ingredients that you and I and all people should put into our daily lives.”
| "Honesty and Integrity", June 1971 Ensign pg 104
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
“Think of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The moral law is not any one instinct or set of instincts; it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.”
“Some foolish persons turn their backs on the wisdom of God and follow the allurement of fickle fashion, the attraction of false popularity, and the thrill of the moment. Their course of conduct so resembles the disastrous experience of Esau, who exchanged his birthright for a mess of pottage.
“To illustrate, may I share with you the results of a survey conducted by a reputable organization and reported in a national magazine.2 The survey was entitled, “Would You, for Ten Million Dollars?” Let me ask you the same questions which were asked in the survey:
For 10 million dollars in cash, would you leave your family permanently?
Would you marry someone you didn’t love?
Would you give up all your friends permanently?
Would you serve a year’s jail term on a framed charge?
Would you take off your clothes in public?
Would you take a dangerous job in which you had a 1-in-10 chance of losing your life?
Would you become a beggar for a year?
“Of the people polled, 1 percent would leave their families, 10 percent would marry lovelessly, 11 percent would give up friends, 12 percent would undress in public, 13 percent would go to jail for a year, 14 percent would take the risky job, and 21 percent would beg for a year.
“Where money, rather than morality, dictates one’s actions, one is inclined away from God. Turning away from God brings broken covenants, shattered dreams, vanished ambitions, unfulfilled expectations, crushed hopes, and ruined lives.”
| "Decisions Determine Destiny"
“In the gospel race there are no losers, only quitters.”
“If we are to think about morality, we must think of three departments; relations between man and man; things inside each man; and relations between man and the power that made him.”
| Mere Christianity
“The most fundamental thing we can discuss in the gospel plan, because only covenant-makers and covenant-keepers can claim the ultimate blessings of the celestial kingdom. Yes, when we talk about covenant keeping, we are talking about the heart and soul of our purpose in mortality.”
| “Making and Keeping Covenants”
“Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”