Dallin H. Oaks
To avoid all possibility for error is to avoid all possibility for growth.Collection: Errors
Adversities are temporary. What is permanent is what we become by the way we react to them.Collection: Adversity
You can never get enough of what you don't need, because what you don't need won't satisfy you.Collection: Spiritual
Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions.Collection: Priorities In Life
I say, choose faith. Choose faith over doubt, choose faith over fear, choose faith over the unknown and the unseen, and choose faith over pessimism.Collection: Doubt
Though we disagree, we should not be disagreeable.Collection: Spiritual
A good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection.Collection: Family
The most powerful teaching of children is by the example of their parents.Collection: Children
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the brightest light and the only hope for this darkened world.Collection: Jesus
When we face seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the fulfillment of righteous responsibilities, we should remember that when we are involved in the work of the Lord, the obstacles before us are never as great as the power behind us. We should reach out and climb. Handholds will only be found by hands that are outstretched. Footholds are only for feet that are on the move.Collection: Moving
If we knew that we would meet the Lord tomorrow - through our premature death or through His unexpected coming - what would we do today? What confessions would we make? What practices would we discontinue? What accounts would we settle? What forgivenesses would we extend? What testimonies would we bear? If we would do those things then, why not now?Collection: Practice
Having descended beneath it all, He is perfectly positioned to lift us.Collection: Lifts
Following Christ is not a casual or occasional practice but a continuous commitment and way of life that applies at all times and in all places.Collection: Commitment
...A man is not required to run faster than he is able but it is a requirement to run.Collection: Running
The distinction between feelings or inclinations on the one hand, and behavior on the other hand, is very clear. It's no sin to have inclinations that if yielded to would produce behavior that would be a transgression. The sin is in yielding to temptation. Temptation is not unique. Even the Savior was tempted.Collection: Unique
If we choose the wrong road, we choose the wrong destination.Collection: Destination
Man's laws cannot make moral what God has declared immoralCollection: Men
When we have a vision of what we can become, our desire and our power to act increase enormously.Collection: Vision
The purpose of the gospel is to transform common creatures into celestial citizens, and that requires change.Collection: Citizens
Our attitude determines how we evaluate our life's experiences. They determine how we evaluate ourselves. They also govern how we look at other people. Are we inclined to judge an eternal soul by the appearance of an earthly body? Do we see the beautiful soul of a brother or sister or do we only see that person's earthly tabernacle? Bodies can be distorted by handicap, twisted by injury or worn by age. But if we can learn to see the inner man and woman, we will be seeing as God sees and loving as He loves.Collection: Beautiful
Plan specifically so you can implement flexibly.Collection: Plans
The commandment to avoid contention applies to those who are right as well as those who are wrong.Collection: Wells
Through the lens of spirituality, we see all the commandments of God as invitations to blessings.Collection: Blessing
When we understand our relationship to God, we also understand our relationship to one another.Collection: Our Relationship
It's amazing how much you can get done if you don't worry about who gets the credit.Collection: Business
Pornographic or erotic stories and pictures are worse than filthy or polluted food. The body has defenses to rid itself of unwholesome food. With a few fatal exceptions, bad food will only make you sick but do no permanent harm. In contrast, a person who feasts upon filthy stories or pornographic or erotic pictures and literature records them in this marvelous retrieval system we call a brain. The brain won't vomit back filth. Once recorded, it will always remain subject to recall, flashing its perverted images across your mind and drawing you away from the wholesome things in life.Collection: Things In Life
We need to remember the purpose of our service to one another. If it were only to accomplish some part of His work, God could dispatch 'legions of angels.' . . . But that would not achieve the purpose of the service He has prescribed. We serve God and our fellowmen in order to become the kind of children who can return to live with our heavenly parents.Collection: Children
It is Christ's atonement that makes it possible for us to be forgiven of our sins and His resurrection that gives us the assurance of immortality and the life to come. It is that life to come that orients our views in mortality and reinforces our determination to live the laws of God so that we can qualify for His blessings in immortality.Collection: Determination
If our bodies are sick, we seek to heal them. We do not give up. The same thing should be true of our marriages.Collection: Giving Up
There are people who oppose a federal Constitutional amendment because they think that the law of family should be made by the states. I can see a legitimate argument there. I think it's mistaken, however, because the federal government, through the decisions of life-tenured federal judges, has already taken over that area.Collection: Taken
My first fundamental premise of our faith is that God is real and so are eternal truths and values not provable by current scientific methods. These ideas are inevitably linked. Like other believers, we proclaim the existence of the ultimate lawgiver, God our Eternal Father, and the existence of moral absolutes. We reject the moral relativism that is becoming the unofficial creed of much of modern culture.Collection: Father
The principles stated in the proclamation on the family are a beautiful expression of this gospel culture.Collection: Beautiful
And young women, please understand that if you dress immodestly, you are magnifying this problem by becoming pornography to some of the men who see you.Collection: Men
Don't accommodate any degree of temptation. Prevent sin and avoid having to deal with its inevitable destruction. So, turn it off! Look away! Avoid it at all costs. Direct your thoughts in wholesome paths. Remember your covenants and be faithful in temple attendance.Collection: Temptation
Our attitude toward abortion . . . is fixed by our knowledge that according to an eternal plan all of the spirit children of God must come to this earth for a glorious purpose, and that individual identity began long before conception and will continue for all the eternities to come. We rely on the prophets of God who have told us that while there may be 'rare' exceptions, 'the practice of elective abortion is fundamentally contrary to the Lord's injunction, 'Thou shalt not . . . kill, nor do anything like unto it'Collection: Children
The ultimate defining fact for all of us is that we are children of Heavenly Parents, born on this earth for a purpose, and born with a divine destiny.Collection: Children
It's wrong to criticize leaders of the Church, even if the criticism is true.Collection: Leader
Even as we seek to be meek and to avoid contention, we must not compromise or dilute our commitment to the truths we understand.Collection: Commitment
As children of God, knowing of His great love and His ultimate knowledge of what is best for our eternal welfare, we trust in Him. The first principle of the gospel is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and faith means trust.Collection: Jesus
When I think of happiness or joy in this life, I begin with some experiences that are simple and basic. I see the expression on the face of a one-year-old taking those first steps. I think of a child loving a puppy or a kitten. If the more mature have not dulled their physical or spiritual sensitivities by excess or disuse, they can also experience joy in what is simple and basic.Collection: Spiritual
We should recognize the reality that just because something is good is not sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them.Collection: Reality
Let us remember that desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. In addition, it is our actions and our desires that cause us to become something, whether a true friend, a gifted teacher, or one who has qualified for eternal life.Collection: Teacher
I expect celibacy of any person that is not married.Collection: Married
Become what our Heavenly Father desires you to become.Collection: Father
Let us give thanks for what we are and for the circumstances God has given us for our personal journey through mortality.Collection: Gratitude
I do not accept the fact that conditions that prevent people from attaining their eternal destiny were born into them without any ability to control. That is contrary to the Plan of Salvation, and it is contrary to the justice and mercy of God. It's contrary to the whole teaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which expresses the truth that by or through the power and mercy of Jesus Christ we will have the strength to do all things. That includes resisting temptation. That includes dealing with things that we're born with, including disfigurements, or mental or physical incapacities.Collection: Jesus
To achieve our eternal destiny, we will desire and work for the qualities required to become an eternal being.Collection: Destiny
Over past years we have seen unrelenting pressure from advocates of homosexuality to accept as normal what is not normal, and to characterize those who disagree as narrow-minded, bigoted and unreasonable. Such advocates are quick to demand freedom of speech and thought for themselves, but equally quick to criticize those with a different view and, if possible, to silence them by applying labels like "homophobic."Collection: Past
God loves all of His children. He has provided a plan for His children to enjoy the choicest blessings that He has to offer in eternity. Those choicest blessings are associated with marriage between a man and a woman by appropriate priesthood authority to bring together a family unit for creation and happiness in this life and in the life to come.Collection: Children
My experiences taught me firsthand that when a person is not performing well, there are many possible reasons, some not of his own choosing.Collection: Taught