I was recently talking with my sister about my goal to read all the talks from general conferences of the Church. I have been working my way backward from the present. And with over 6300 talks read/listened to at the time of writing this, I am back to the Oct. 1935 general conference report. I told her I had over 225 pages worth of quotes from the various talks that hit me. As we were talking, I felt strongly that I needed to share these quotes. Because talks before 1971 are not in the gospel library app, the treasure trove of prophet teachings found therein are all but lost to those who are not going to search the Conference Report Archives (PDFs) on the Church Website (Click here to read them) or on Archive.org (How I listen to them).
So I have decided to publish the quotes that stood out to me for each conference from the archives that I have studied. I have included the page number (pp) so that you can look up these quotes, get the context, as well as read the entire talk if you wish! (Click here for the 1970 general conference report PDF). I hope these quotes strengthen your testimony that we have prophets who see around corners! As well as increase your desire to read and study the Oct. 1970 General Conference Report! (NOTE: For all the installments click HERE)
55+ Powerful Quotes From the Oct. 1970 General Conference
“I plead with the world to repent and believe the truth, to let the light of Christ shine in their lives, to keep every good and true principle they have, and to add to these the further light and knowledge that has come by revelation in this day. I plead with them to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and reap the blessings of the gospel.”
Joseph Fielding Smith
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 7-8
“We are too often afraid of what is called blind obedience, but obedience to God is always right — blind or otherwise.”
Elder Eldred G. Smith Patriarch to the Church
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 16
“Parents are directly responsible for the righteous rearing of their children, and this responsibility cannot be safely delegated to relatives, friends, neighbors, the school, the church, or the state.”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 21
“As a watchman on the tower, I feel to warn you that one of the chief means of misleading our youth and destroying the family unit is our educational institutions.”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 22
“Today there are much worse things that can happen to a child than not getting a full college education. In fact, some of the worst things have happened to our children while attending colleges led by administrators who wink at subversion and amorality.”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 22
“I would rather have my child exposed to smallpox, typhus fever, cholera, or other malignant and deadly diseases than to the degrading influence of a corrupt teacher. It is infinitely better to take chances with an ignorant, but pure-minded teacher than with the greatest philosopher who is impure.”
Karl G. Maeser as quoted by Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 22
“Whether your child attends [Brigham Young University] or not, it is important that you stay close to your children, daily review, if possible, what they have learned in school, and go over their textbooks.”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 22
“Youth leaders, are you holding aloft our standards or have you compromised them for the lowest common denominator in order to appease the deceived or vile within the Church?”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 24
“Because some parents have refused to become informed and then stand up and inform their children, they are witnessing the gradual physical and spiritual destruction of their posterity.”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 24
“The seeds of divorce are often sown and the blessings of children delayed by wives working outside the home. Working mothers should remember that their children usually need more of mother than of money.”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 24
“As conditions in the world get progressively worse, it is crucial that the family draw closer together in righteousness and that family solidarity be established.”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 24
“Let’s strengthen the family. Family and individual prayer, morning and evening, can invite the blessings of the Lord on your household. Mealtime provides a wonderful time to review the activities of the day and to not only feed the body, but to feed the spirit as well, with members of the family taking turns reading the scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon. Nighttime is a great time for the busy father to go to each child’s bedside, to talk with him, answer his questions, and tell him how much he is loved.”
Ezra Taft Benson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 25
“It is man’s purpose in life to learn to know God, to know the nature and kind of being God is, and then to conform to his laws and ordinances; to progress, to be exalted to that high state wherein man becomes perfect as the Father is perfect.”
Elder James A. Cullimore
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 41
“We cannot choose which part of the gospel we think is true or which part we should live. We cannot compartmentalize our lives.”
President N. Eldon Tanner
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 52
“It is most important that we as members of the Church stand firmly and unitedly in the cause of truth and righteousness. We have declared to the world that we have the gospel of Christ, that we are going to stand against vice. Shall we stand firm, or shall we waver and be driven by the wind and tossed? Shall we forsake the cause of righteousness in order to please men, because we desire to give lip service rather than heart service, or because of some political power that is brought to bear upon us?”
President N. Eldon Tanner
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 53
“Only when we are seriously striving to live the teachings of Christ can we make any real spiritual progress.”
President N. Eldon Tanner
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 53
“The basic problem of our time is loneliness — the insecurity and anxiety that come with separation from God, and from one’s fellowmen, and from a sense of alienation from self that is almost always present. The source of reconciliation and wholeness is Jesus Christ.”
Elder Marion D. Hanks
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 58
“I heard President Joseph F. Smith say in Rotterdam in 1906 that the day would come when temples of the Lord would dot that whole land of Europe, and I have lived long enough to see two of them built.”
Elder LeGrand Richards
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 62
“That is the message we have to all the world, and I bear you my witness that there isn’t an honest man or an honest woman in this world who really loves the Lord who wouldn’t join this church if they would take time to find out what it really is.”
Elder LeGrand Richards
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 62-63
“The only conquest that brings satisfaction is the conquest of self.”
Gordon B. Hinckley
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 65
“No nation, no civilization can long endure without strength in the homes of its people. That strength derives from the integrity of those who establish those homes.
No family can have peace, no home can be free from storms of adversity unless that family and that home are built on foundations of morality, fidelity, and mutual respect. There cannot be peace where there is not trust; there cannot be freedom where there is not loyalty. The warm sunlight of love will not rise out of a swamp of immorality.
As with the bud, so with the blossom. Youth is the seedtime for the future flowering of family life. To hope for peace and love and gladness out of promiscuity is to hope for that which will never come. To wish for freedom out of immorality is to wish for something that cannot be. Said the Savior, ‘Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.’ (John 8:34.)”
Gordon B. Hinckley
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 66
“Every God-fearing, freedom-loving, truth-seeking person in the world, regardless of nation, creed, color, or race, should constantly be praying and continually be working for a strong, enduring, righteous United States of America.”
Elder Sterling W. Sill
CR, Oct. 1970 Page 76
“If we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion; if we and they shall live always in the fear of God and shall respect his commandments; … we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country, and we may be sure of one thing: Our country will go on prospering. But if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no one can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”
Daniel Webster as quoted by Elder Sterling W. Sill
CR, Oct. 1970 Page 76
“To a considerable extent this nation has behaved like great civilizations of the past when they have become self-indulgent and pleasure ridden, just before they crumbled.”
Elder Franklin D. Richards
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 79
“In thinking of honesty, we may first think of our relations with others, but in many respects it is more important to be honest with ourselves.”
Elder Franklin D. Richards
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 80
“We should exert our best efforts to accomplish our righteous objectives, utilizing every legitimate means but not permitting ourselves to commit a wrong in our quest for the right. It is better to lose than to win an unjust or dishonest cause.”
Elder Franklin D. Richards
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 82
“Even if a person has all the wealth he wants, he still needs to work for the sake of his soul — and the same is true of those who have learned to live on very little. Work is a physical and spiritual necessity.”
Elder Richard L. Evans
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 87
“We have the laws of life. We have God-given standards, and we realize the results of the way we live life —and rationalizing won’t change the outcome. Virtue is still virtue. Evil is still evil.”
Elder Richard L. Evans
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 87
“I come to you today with a simple assertion that God does not deal in theories.”
Elder Richard L. Evans
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 87
“There aren’t any careless, easy shortcuts that go anywhere that anyone who knew what he was doing would really want to go.”
Elder Richard L. Evans
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 88
“Live so as to be at peace. Be clean, beloved young friends. Clean is one of the most wonderful of words. Be comfortable. No one will ever be comfortable without being clean. Life can be wholesome, with inner peace and solid hope as you live the law, keep the commandments, and humble yourselves before our Father.”
Elder Richard L. Evans
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 88
“It does not matter what office we hold as long as we are true and faithful to our obligations. One office is not greater than another.”
Joseph Fielding Smith
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 91
“The influence of Church members (whether as students or taxpayers) on our public institutions is needed now — more than ever.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 94
“This is not an American church — it is the Church of Jesus Christ, who is the God of all people on this planet”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 95
“All of our youth need not be neurosurgeons, and the youth who becomes a craftsman should feel just as ‘approved’ as his friend who is a microbiologist.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“Parents, bishops, and educational counselors will do well to approach career counseling, bearing in mind that the selection of a career is usually a matter of preference and not principle.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“We can pursue learning without fear, for the gospel of Jesus Christ incorporates all truth, but it distinguishes between mere fact and saving truths.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“Education, when joined with service to others (for learning loses its moral authority unless it reaches out) is clearly related to the development of deserved self-esteem, which controls our capacity to love God, to love others, and to love life.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“The gospel tells us that we have a real brotherhood that will last beyond the grave: it is not merely a biological brotherhood.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“We must do much more to help our young to see the preventive and prescriptive powers of the gospel for those very problems about which our young are rightfully concerned.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“The gospel tells us that unchastity can cause inner spiritual ‘concussions” and ‘bleeding.’ Jacob described ‘people in a time of gross unchastity as being in a circumstance in which ‘many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.’ (Jac. 2:35.)”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“We will also do our young a great favor if our efforts to teach the gospel to them include not only teaching by exhortation and explanation, which are vital, but also by the eloquence of example and the confirmation of experience, for the latter two methods weigh very heavily on the scales of today’s youth. “
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“The home will always be our most vital teaching institution. When the home fails, it will be difficult for the other institutions of any culture or society — political, economic, and even educational — to compensate for the failures in the home. If we poison the headwaters of humanity — the home — it is exceedingly difficult to depollute downstream. If we wish to make our efforts count in meeting the vexing challenges of our time, the ecology of effectiveness suggests of the home that truly, ‘This is the place!'”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 97
“Let us assure our young that the cadence of the divine commitment to education and the quest for truth echo, like a drum roll, through the corridors of dispensational history.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp.s 97-98
“Those who possess absolute truths need fear no ancillary truth but should pursue learning vigorously, since learning is good so long as we “hearken unto the counsels of God.” When education is thus pursued by our young today, they should be assured by all of us that they are ‘about’ their ‘Father’s business,’ and be witnessed to; that when man has reached the small ‘periphery of the spider web of his own reason and logic,’ he will find the ropes of revelation on which he can climb upward, forever!”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 98
“Meekness is a condition of voluntary humility.”
Elder Alvin R. Dyer
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 151
“The secret is to live the best you know how just one day at a time, and if the day seems too long, we should break it down into hours or even minutes.”
Bishop Robert L. Simpson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 99
“Law and order is the basis of the priesthood, wherever it is established.”
Bishop Robert L. Simpson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 101
“Teaching members of the Church to keep the commandments of God was described by the new First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as its greatest challenge.”
Joseph Fielding Smith as quoted by Thomas S. Monson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp.s 107
“The goal of gospel teaching today, as emphasized in the teacher development program, is not to ‘pour information’ into the minds of class members. It is not to show how much the teacher knows, nor is it merely to increase knowledge about the Church. The basic goal of teaching in the Church is to help bring about worthwhile changes in the lives of boys and girls, men and women. The aim is to inspire the individual to think about, feel about, and then do something about living gospel principles.”
Thomas S. Monson
CR, Oct. 1970, pp.s 107
“The kingdom of God must be a continuing revolution against the norms of the society that fall below the standards that are set for us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the field of public life, it must be a continuing revolution against proposals that contradict the fundamental principles as laid down in the Constitution of the United States, which was written by men whom God raised up for this very purpose. If we remember that, we will be in the forefront of every battle against the things that are tearing down our society.”
Harold B. Lee
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 110
“Brethren of the priesthood, if we will be united and let our light shine, and not hide our light under a bushel but exercise it righteously, and let our priesthood callings be an eternal revolution against the norms of society or against any proposals that fall below the standards as set forth in the gospel of Jesus Christ or as laid down by the Constitution of the United States written by inspired men, then we will be a force in the world that will be “the marvelous work and wonder” which the Lord said the kingdom of God was to be.”
Harold B. Lee
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 112
“If the children of the Lord, which includes all who are upon this earth, regardless of nationality, color, or creed, will heed the call of the true messenger of the gospel of Jesus Christ … each may in time see the Lord and know that he is, as the Lord has promised, then their calling and election will be made sure.”
Harold B. Lee
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 116
“Today I could desire with all my heart that all within the sound of this broadcast would likewise thank God for one more day! For what? For the opportunity to take care of some unfinished business. To repent; to right some wrongs; to influence for good some wayward child; to reach out to someone who cries for help — in short, to thank God for one more day to prepare to meet God.”
Harold B. Lee
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 117
(NOTE: this is a long one, 4 paragraphs, but the context is very important)
“When the Church was first organized, in fact, the day on which it was organized, the Lord was speaking to the Church. He didn’t mean just the six members that were then the constituted number of the Church: he was speaking about the President of the Church, who was the Prophet Joseph Smith at that time. And this is what he said:
‘Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words [the President’s words] and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me;
For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.
For by doing these things the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory.’ (D&C 21:4-6.)
We have some tight places to go before the Lord is through with this church and the world in this dispensation, which is the last dispensation, which shall usher in the coming of the Lord. The gospel was restored to prepare a people ready to receive him. The power of Satan will increase; we see it in evidence on every hand. There will be inroads within the Church. There will be, as President Tanner has said, ‘Hypocrites, those professing, but secretly are full of dead men’s bones.’ We will see those who profess membership but secretly are plotting and trying to lead people not to follow the leadership that the Lord has set up to preside in this church.
Now the only safety we have as members of this church is to do exactly what the Lord said to the Church in that day when the Church was organized. We must learn to give heed to the words and commandments that the Lord shall give through his prophet, ‘as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me; … as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.’ (D&C 21:4-5.) There will be some things that take patience and faith. You may not like what comes from the authority of the Church. It may contradict your political views. It may contradict your social views. It may interfere with some of your social life. But if you listen to these things, as if from the mouth of the Lord himself, with patience and faith, the promise is that ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory.’ (D&C 21:6.)
Harold B. Lee
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 152
“Your safety and ours depends upon whether or not we follow the ones whom the Lord has placed to preside over his church. He knows whom he wants to preside over this church, and he will make no mistake. The Lord doesn’t do things by accident. He has never done anything accidentally.”
Harold B. Lee
CR, Oct. 1970, pp. 153
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