Dallin H. Oaks
We have the agency to choose which characteristics will define us; those choices are not thrust upon us.Collection: Agency
We should seek after spiritual gifts. They can lead us to God. They can shield us from the power of the adversary. They can compensate for our inadequacies and repair our imperfections.Collection: Spiritual
Our lives of service and sacrifice are the most appropriate expressions of our commitment to serve the Master and our fellowmen.Collection: Commitment
The nature and extent of profanity and vulgarity in our society is a measure of its deterioration.Collection: Deterioration
Young people, if you honor your fathers, you will love them, respect them, confide in them, be considerate of them, express appreciation for them, and demonstrate all of these things by following their counsel in righteousness and by obeying the commandments of God.Collection: Appreciation
Religious insights and values are just as important today as they were 50 or 100 years ago.Collection: Religious
The greatest power God has given to His sons cannot be exercised without the companionship of one of his daughters, because only to his daughters has God given the power to be a creator of bodies so that God’s design and the great plan might meet fruition.Collection: Daughter
Going forward with our service and work is an important way room qualify for revelation. In my study of the scriptures I have noted that most revelation to the children of God comes when they are on the move, not when they are sitting back in their habitations waiting for the Lord to tell them the first step to take.Collection: Children
Our Savior gave Himself in unselfish service. He taught that each of us should follow Him by denying ourselves of selfish interests in order to serve others.Collection: Selfish
The ultimate treasures on earth and in heaven are our children and our posterity.Collection: Mother
We are cast as combatants in the war between truth and error. There is no middle ground. We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them.Collection: War
Loving-kindness is required, but a follower of Christ-just like the Master-will be firm in the truth.Collection: Kindness
When we give thanks in all things, we see hardships and adversities in the context of the purpose of life... We are meant to learn and grow through opposition, through meeting our challenges, and through teaching others to do the same... the Lord will not only consecrate our afflictions for our gain, but He will use them to bless the lives of countless others.Collection: Teaching
The intensity of our desire to share the gospel is a great indicator of the extent of our personal conversion.Collection: Desire
What does it mean to be true to the faith? That word true implies commitment, integrity, endurance, and courage.Collection: Integrity
The Atonement of Jesus Christ and the healing it offers do much more than provide the opportunity for repentance from sins. The Atonement also gives us the strength to endure "pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind," because our Savior also took upon Him "the pains and the sicknesses of his people" (Alma 7:11). Brothers and sisters, if your faith and prayers and the power of the priesthood do not heal you from an affliction, the power of the Atonement will surely give you the strength to bear the burden.Collection: Brother
We should refrain from anything that seems to be a final judgment of any person...the Lord alone has the capacity to judge...And, in all of this we must remember the command to forgive.Collection: Judging
The gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to change. “Repent” is its most frequent message, and repenting means giving up all of our practices-perso nal, family, ethnic, and national-that are contrary to the commandments of God. The purpose of the gospel is to transform common creatures into celestial citizens, and that requires change.Collection: Jesus
Those who are used to a clergy take very lightly those who do not have a formal divinity degree: like Paul and Peter and James and John.Collection: Religion
We are overcome by the "cares ... of this life" when we are paralyzed by fear of the future, which hinders our going forward in faith, trusting in God and His promises. It is up to each of us to set the priorities and to do the things that make our soil good and our harvest plentiful.Collection: Priorities
Simple and more frequent dates allow both men and women to ‘shop around’ in a way that allows extensive evaluation of the prospects. The old-fashioned date was a wonderful way to get acquainted with a member of the opposite sex. It encouraged conversation. It allowed you to see how you treat others and how you are treated in a one-on-one situation. It gave opportunities to learn how to initiate and sustain a mature relationship. None of that happens in hanging outCollection: Sex
Our spirits...require nourishment. Just as there is food for the body, there is food for the spirit. The consequences of spiritual malnutrition are just as hurtful to our spiritual lives as physical malnutrition is to our physical bodies.Collection: Spiritual
When all other hope is gone, our Father in Heaven provides the Lamb of God, and we are saved by his sacrifice.Collection: Father
I testify of our Savior, Jesus Christ, whose teachings and example we seek to follow. He invites all of us who are heavy laden to come unto Him, to learn of Him, to follow Him, and thus to find rest to our souls.Collection: Jesus
Those who enjoy the blessings of liberty under a divinely inspired constitution should promote morality, and they should practice what the Founding Fathers called civic virtue.Collection: Father
If you are trying to live with and maintain ascendancy over same-gender attractions, the best way to do that is to have groups that define their members in terms other than same-gender attractions.Collection: Trying
The coup de grace which ends the patient's life altogether is quite equivalent to the drastic modification in the institution of marriage that would be brought on by same-gender marriage.Collection: Grace
There are certain indicia of marriage - certain legal and social consequences and certain legitimacy - which if given to some relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman tend to degrade if not destroy the institution that's been honored over so many thousands of years.Collection: Men
If people want to legalize a particular relationship, we need to be careful if that kind of relationship has been disapproved for millennia.Collection: People
Law has at least two roles: one is to define and regulate the limits of acceptable behavior. The other is to teach principles for individuals to make individual choices.Collection: Law
The time has come in our society when I see great wisdom and purpose in a United States Constitutional amendment declaring that marriage is between a man and a woman. There is nothing in that proposed amendment that requires a criminal prosecution or that directs the attorneys general to go out and round people up, but it declares a principle and it also creates a defensive barrier against those who would alter that traditional definition of marriage.Collection: Men
And so we understand that the atonement of Jesus Christ gives us the opportunity to overcome spiritual death that results from sin, and, through making and keeping sacred covenants, to have the blessings of eternal life.Collection: Spiritual
Alcohol is the number one addictive drug in our day.Collection: Numbers
I just didn’t spend enough time with my job.Collection: Jobs
I think it's important for you to understand that homosexuality is not a noun that describes a condition. It's an adjective that describes feelings or behavior.Collection: Thinking
As Elder George F. Richards, President of the Council of the Twelve, said in a conference address in April 1947, 'when we say anything bad about the leaders of the Church, whether true or false, we tend to impair their influence and their usefulness and are thus working against the Lord and his cause.' ... The Holy Ghost will not guide or confirm criticism of the Lord's anointed, or of Church leaders, local or general. This reality should be part of the spiritual evaluation that LDS readers and viewers apply to those things written about our history and those who made it.Collection: Spiritual
My duty as a member of the Council of the Twelve is to protect what is most unique about the LDS church, namely the authority of priesthood, testimony regarding the restoration of the gospel, and the divine mission of the Savior. Everything may be sacrificed in order to maintain the integrity of those essential facts. Thus, if Mormon Enigma reveals information that is detrimental to the reputation of Joseph Smith, then it is necessary to try to limit its influence and that of its authors.Collection: Integrity
There is no fullness of joy in the next life without a family unit, including a husband, a wife, and posterity. Further, men are that they might have joy. In the eternal perspective, same-gender activity will only bring sorrow and grief and the loss of eternal opportunities.Collection: Husband
There are people with physical disabilities that prevent them from having any hope - in some cases any actual hope and in other cases any practical hope - of marriage. The circumstance of being currently unable to marry, while tragic, is not unique.Collection: Unique
Every teaching position, every missionary position can be held by single people. We welcome to that kind of service people who are struggling with any kind of temptation when the struggle is a good struggle and they are living so as to be appropriate teachers, or missionaries, or whatever the calling may be.Collection: Teacher
I think it is an accurate statement to say that some people consider feelings of same-gender attraction to be the defining fact of their existence. There are also people who consider the defining fact of their existence that they are from Texas or that they were in the United States Marines. Or they are red-headed, or they are the best basketball player that ever played for such-and-such a high school. People can adopt a characteristic as the defining example of their existence and often those characteristics are physical.Collection: Basketball
The commandment to honor our parents echoes the sacred spirit of family relationships in which-at their best-we have sublime expressions of heavenly love and care for one another. We sense the importance of these relationships when we realize that our greatest expressions of joy or pain in mortality come from the members of our familiesCollection: Pain
Well-taught doctrines and principles have a more powerful influence on behavior than rules.Collection: Powerful
It seems to me that a Latter-day Saint parent has a responsibility in love and gentleness to affirm the teaching of the Lord through His prophets that the course of action he is about to embark upon is sinful.Collection: Teaching
The Atonement of Jesus Christ is powerful enough to reach out and cleanse you if you are repentant and give up your sinful behavior, but I urge you not to embark on that path because repentance is not easy.Collection: Jesus
A person with homosexual inclinations, where they're kept under control, or, if yielded to are appropriately repented of, is eligible to do anything in the Church that can be done by any member of the Church who is single.Collection: Church
In at least one country where homosexual activists have won major concessions, we have even seen a church pastor threatened with prison for preaching from the pulpit that homosexual behavior is sinful. Given these trends, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must take a stand on doctrine and principle. This is more than a social issue - ultimately it may be a test of our most basic religious freedoms to teach what we know our Father in Heaven wants us to teach.Collection: Country
It is not enough that we are under call or even that we are going in the right direction. The timing must be right.Collection: Timing
Motive is also important in our quest for knowledge and in the questioning that accompanies it. In commenting on our duty to educate for eternity, Eugene England writes: Teaching or learning - with the Spirit of God simply means (though it is not simple) that we are doing so with an eye single to eternal, not worldly, values, with an eye single to lasting development of the mind and spirit and to useful service to others, especially to aid in their lasting development of mind and spirit.Collection: Teaching