Wo unto you rich men, that will not give to the poor, for your riches will canker your souls; and this shall be your lamentation in the day of judgment: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and my soul is not saved!

—Doctrine & Covenants 56:16

If others’ blessings are not your blessings, others’ curses are not your curses.

—Joseph Smith

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

A Christian loves people and uses things.

A charlatan loves things and uses people.

—American Proverb

The great purpose of the Church is to translate truth into a better social order.

—David O. McKay

Being a living part of the earth, we cannot harm any part of her without hurting ourselves.

—Lame Deer (Mohawk)

Man is demolishing nature…We are killing things that keep us alive.

—Thor Heyerdahl

Is it the end of living and the beginning of survival? Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

—Seattle (Duwamish)

[Good] ideas come from God.

—Albert Einstein

America is more than just a country. It’s an idea. It could have happened anywhere, but it happened here.

—A Puerto Rican visiting New York

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

—Walt Whitman

The American Constitution is the most wonderful word ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

—[Pr. Minister] William E. Gladstone

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free…They valued liberty both as an end and a means, they believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.

—Louis D. Brandeis

I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will cost us to maintain this Declaration…Yet through all the gloom I see rays of ravishing light and glory. The end is worth more than all the means.

—John Adams

My views…are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.

—Thomas Jefferson

The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and Saint Matthew, from Isaiah and Saint Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days.

—Harry S. Truman

When the reverence of this nation for its great men dies, the glory of the nation will die with it.

—Calvin Coolidge

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty.

—Charles Caleb Colton

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

—George Washington

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly [beyond] the government of any other.

—John Adams

Something we were withholding made us weak until we found out that it was ourselves.

—Robert Frost

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

—Nathan Hale

O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved…America! God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.

—Katherine Lee Bates

Democracy cannot be saved by supermen, but only by the unswerving devotion and goodness of millions.

—Adlai E. Stevenson

Justice, humanity, and benevolence are the duties you owe to society in general. To your Country the same duties are incumbent …with the additional obligation of sacrificing ease, pleasure, wealth and life itself for its defense and security.

—Abigail Adams

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

—Abraham Lincoln

There is an inseparable connection between the keeping of the commandments and the well-being of society.

—Neal A. Maxwell

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

—James Madison

For as their laws and governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil [became] more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for their laws had become corrupted. [Pre-Amerind civilizations, whose prophet-historians (Ether, Nephi, Alma, Helaman, et al.) recorded the Book of Mormon annals]. —Helaman 5:2

And he hath sworn in his wrath that whoso should possess this land should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when they are ripened in iniquity. And this [warning] cometh unto you that ye may not bring down the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of the land [Nephites, Jaredites, etc.] have hitherto done. Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written.

—Ether 2:8-12

[Those] who sin against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation.

—Doctrine & Covenants 82:3

It takes a lot of sophistication to remain innocent.

—Ruth Gentler

There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

—I Timothy 2:5

I asked Jesus, “How much do you love me?” “This much,” he answered. Then he stretched out his arms and died.

—Unknown

Law and religion—the dual beacons of our Republic, each with its distinct vantage, as our two eyes—must neither cross nor splay, but focus in concert at crucial points, availing goodness and progress beyond reach of monolithic societies.

—Ralph Sheffield

There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.

—James Madison

[A] true danger is when liberty is nibbled away for expedients.

—Edmund Burke

Every step we take toward making the State the caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our master.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower