J. Reuben Clark famous quotes

If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Investigation

We get nearer to the Lord through music than perhaps through any other thing except prayer.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Music #Prayer #Lord

Debt never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation...it is never laid off work...it buys no food; it wears no clothes; it is unhoused... it has neither weddings nor births nor deaths; it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, it is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it...and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Crush #Holiday #Sleep

Let us avoid debt as we would avoid a plague...Let every head of every household see to it that he has on hand enough food and clothing, and, where possible, fuel also, for at least a year ahead...Let every head of household aim to own his own home, free from mortgage. Let us again clothe ourselves with these proved and sterling virtues-honesty, truthfulness, chastity, sobriety, temperance, industry, and thrift; let us discard all covetousness and greed.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Religious #Honesty #Home

Do you know that all of the money that we are spending, that the government is spending, must come from you? The government has no great pile of gold to which it can go to get what it gives you. The government has not one cent that it does not take from your pockets. Do not imagine, do not believe, do not go on the theory that you are not to pay this bill, unless the fundamentals of our government are to be overturned.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Believe #Government #Giving

In the service of the Lord it is not where but how you serve.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Lord

Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Crush #Integrity #Patriotic

But there is one whom you do not deceive, and that is Christ, our Lord. He knows all. Personally, I have felt that nobody need keep much of a record about me, except what I keep myself in my mind, which is a part of my spirit. I often question in my mind, whether it is going to require very many witnesses in addition to my own wrongdoing.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Mind #Needs #Records

Reduced to its lowest terms, the great struggle which now rocks the whole earth more and more takes on the character of a struggle of the individual versus the state.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Struggle #Character #Rocks

I am not a strict constructionalist, believing that we seal our eternal progress by what we do here. It is my belief that God will save all of His children that he can: and while, if we live unrighteously here, we shall not go to the other side in the same status, so to speak, as those who lived righteously; nevertheless, the unrighteous will have their chance, and in the eons of the eternities that are to follow, they, too, may climb to the destinies to which they who are righteous and serve God, have climbed to those eternities that are to come.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Children #Believe #Destiny

There is no royal road to any learning, no matter what it is. There is no royal road to any righteous living, no matter who you are or what you are. There is no royal road to anything that is worthwhile. Nothing that is deserving of earning or of cherishing comes except through hard work. I care not how much of a genius you may be, the rule will still hold.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Life #Hard Work #Genius

The ravening wolves are amongst us, from our own membership, and they, more than any others, are clothed in sheep's clothing, because they wear the habiliments of the priesthood…We should be careful of them.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Sheep #Membership #Should

I believe American manhood is too valuable to be sacrificed on foreign soil for foreign issues and causes.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Believe #Issues #Soil

Let every head of household see to it that he has on hand enough food and clothing and, where possible, fuel also for at least a year ahead.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Hands #Years #Survival

It is the eternal, inescapable law that growth comes only from work and preparation, whether the growth be material, mental, or spiritual. Work has no substitute.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Spiritual #Law #Preparation

We are met today in a general conference. Sometimes, I hear, the people feel, some of them, that perhaps we are not quite as "peppy" as we ought to be. But this is not a Church convention. This is a general conference where we meet for general counsel and advice. It is a place to which we come for the results of the reflective operations of our minds.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#People #Advice #Mind

Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it makes it practically certain that we shall have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Military #War #Fighting

Let us avoid debt as we would avoid a plague; where we are now in debt, let us get out of debt; if not today...tomorrow.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Debt #Today #Tomorrow

Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind. It places her who honors its holy calling and service next to the angels.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Mom #Angel #Motherhood

A mind obsessed with sex is good for nothing else.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Sex #Mind #Obsessed

There is no curse equal to the curse of idleness. It destroys the man, the group, the people, or the nation who suffer under it.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Work #Men #People

We may first observe that communism and socialism--which we shall hereafter group together and dub Statism--cannot live with Christianity nor with any religion that postulates a Creator such as the Declaration of Independence recognizes. The slaves of Statism must know no power, no authority, no source of blessing, no God, but the State....
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Blessing #Independence #Together

The real long term objective of the Welfare Plan is the fulfilling of character in the members of the Church, givers and receivers, rescuing all that is finest down deep inside of them, and bringing to flower and fruitage the latent richness of the Spirit, which, after all, is the mission and purpose and reason for being of this Church.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Real #Flower #Character

I say to you that the price of liberty is and always has been blood - human blood.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Blood #Liberty #Humans

That man has a spiritual body is evidenced by the account . . . given in the writings of Moses that man was created spiritually in heaven before he was given a natural body.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Spiritual #Writing #Men

...when we really get into hard times, where food is scarce or there is none at all, and so with clothing and shelter, money may be no good for there may be nothing to buy, and you cannot eat money, you cannot get enough of it together to burn to keep you warm, and you cannot wear it.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Religious #Hard Times #Self Reliance

What we get, we members of the Church, compared with the total mass that is distributed, is almost microscopic, but the spirit in which we might take it, the spirit in which we might spend it, is the leaven that might leaven the whole lump. Let us be patriotic; let us love the government under which we live.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Patriotic #Government #Church

Let us again clothe ourselves with these proved and sterling virtues - honesty, truthfulness, chastity, sobriety, temperance, industry, and thrift; let us discard all covetousness and greed.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Honesty #Greed #Sobriety

One year ago, on this occasion, I called your attention to the abuses that had crept into the distribution of our public funds, and I urged you and pleaded with you that, so far as the Church and its membership were concerned, we do not soil our hands with the bounteous outpouring of funds which the government was giving unto us. I renew that plea now. My brethren and sisters, for the sake of the government which we love, for the sake of the government which we believe was divinely inspired, be honest with it. Be honest, just ordinarily gold honest. That is all I ask.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Believe #Government #Hands

Eighteen months ago, when first I stood before you I called attention, as earnestly and seriously as I knew how, to what looked to me to be the dangers that were ahead, and I urged you at that time to practice the old virtues of thrift, of honesty, of truthfulness, of industry, and so on through the list of those I named. All that I said then I say again.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Honesty #Practice #Attention

May the Lord be with us at all times, under all circumstances; may he bring into our lives a burning desire to uphold the Constitution, a living faith in its inspired origin, that we may always be found among those who shall support it to the last breath.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Support #Desire #Burning

I say to you that the price of liberty is and always has been blood, human blood, and if our liberties are lost, we shall never regain them except at the price of blood. They must not be lost.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Integrity #Patriotic #Blood

You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He who holds in his hands the destinies of nations, make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed, and enabled you with pure hearts and hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time, the great charge He has committed to your keeping.
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Integrity #Patriotic #Heart

I am persuaded, from all the facts that have come to me, that it would have been possible, if we had functioned as the Lord intended us to function, if we had paid our tithes and our offerings as the Lord intended us to pay them, we might have gone on without one dollar from our federal government. And has it ever occurred to you what a mighty influence we should have exercised for good and for respect and for all of the virtues that we have been taught, and that God has commanded us to exercise and cultivate and practice, if we had just followed along what he has asked us to do?
-- J. Reuben Clark

#Exercise #Government #Offering