Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

I don’t have to see a murder in order to condemn murder.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

There is a heavy emphasis in Mormonism on initiative, on responsibility, on a work ethic, and on education. If you take those elements together with a free-enterprise system, you’ve got the chemistry for a lot of industry.

Treat your children like the blessings they are or don’t have them at all.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

The great thing about having a bunch of kids is they just remind you that you’re the person who takes them to go poop!

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

I think there are a whole host of things that are civil rights, and then there are other things – such as traditional marriage – that, I think, express a community’s concern and regard for a particular institution.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

I disagree with any policy that would turn America’s back on people who are fleeing harm. I frankly believe that it is contrary to everything that we have symbolically and actually said we stand for.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

I lived a sloppy life. So I took very small increments in my life. I started making my bed. I started cleaning my room. There were dishes in the sink. It started off with doing small house chores. I saw that the yard needed to be mowed. So instead of being told it needed to be mowed, I would mow it.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

So far as I am concerned, I could not be accused of having set eyes, or having wished to set eyes, upon Darius‘ wife: on the contrary, I have refused even to listen to those who spoke to me of her beauty.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

To compromise simply means that you go a tiny bit below what you know is right.