Best 354 quotes of Ezra Taft Benson on MyQuotes

If you really want to receive joy and happiness, then serve others with all your heart. Lift their burden, and your own burden will be lighter.

If you turn your life over to the Lord he can do so much more with it than we can.

If you want to get the spirit of the gospel in your home, support the missionary program. Prepare your sons and daughters through your home evenings; through setting the proper example in your homes. Prepare to send them into the mission field. These young sons and daughters will bless your names forever if you help to make it possible through your training and your example and your willingness to sacrifice just a little, if you can call it sacrifice, to see them go into the mission field.

I grew up believing that the willingness and ability to work is the basic ingredient of successful farming. Hard, intelligent work is the key. Use it, and your chances for success are good.

I have a vision of artists putting into film, drama, literature, music, and paintings great themes and great characters from the Book of Mormon.

I have a vision of the whole Church getting nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon.

I have faith that the Constitution will be saved as prophesied by Joseph Smith. It will be saved by the righteous citizens of this nation who love and cherish freedom. It will be saved by enlightened members of this Church-among others-men and women who understand and abide the principles of the Constitution....I testify that the God of heaven sent some of His choicest spirits to lay the foundation of this government, and He has now sent other choice spirits to help preserve it.

I have little need to remind you that water has become one of our major national concerns.

I have often said one of the greatest secrets of missionary work is work! If a missionary works, he will get the Spirit; if he gets the Spirit, he will teach by the Spirit; and if he teaches by the Spirit, he will touch the hearts of the people and he will be happy. There will be no homesickness, no worrying about families, for all time and talents and interests are centered on the work of the ministry. Work, work, work-there is no satisfactory substitute, especially in missionary work.

I hope we can be happy where we are, be grateful for our blessings-now-here, accept the challenge that is ours and make the most of it, and don't be envious of others. God help us to be grateful.

In a home where there is an able-bodied husband, he is expected to be the breadwinner.

... in all seriousness... you who submit yourselves to an abortion or to an operation that precludes you from safely having additional healthy children are jeopardizing your exaltation and your future membership in the kingdom of God.

I never travel across this great nation without experiencing a feeling of gratitude and thanksgiving for all that we have and are. As I see its broad fruitful farms, its humming factories, its gleaming cities, certainly it is easy to realize that we have achieved unequaled material progress in this great country.

In general, the more food we eat in its natural state - without additives - and the less it is refined, the healthier it will be for us. Food can affect the mind, and deficiencies of certain elements in the body can promote mental depression.

Inspiring music may fill the soul with heavenly thoughts, move one to righteous action, or speak peace to the soul.

In the beginning, Adam — not Eve— was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's calling is in the home, not in the marketplace.

In the scriptures there is no such thing as righteous pride. It is always considered as a sin.

In the scriptures there is no such thing as righteous pride. It is always considered as a sin. We are not speaking of a wholesome view of self-worth, which is best established by a close relationship with God. But we are speaking of pride as the universal sin, as someone has described it. . . . Essentially, pride is a "my will" rather than "thy will" approach to life. The opposite of pride is humbleness, meekness, submissiveness, or teachableness.

In these sacred documents are embodied eternal principles that no man, group of men, or nation has the right to withhold from others. Here is our basis for freedom of individual achievement. Our Constitution with its Bill of Rights guarantees to all our people the greatest freedom ever enjoyed by the people of any great nation. This system guarantees freedom of individual enterprise, freedom to own property, freedom to start one's own business and to operate it according to one's own judgment so long as the enterprise is honorable.

I promise you that, with increased attendance in the temples of our God, you shall receive increased personal revelation to bless your life as you bless those who have died

I reverence the Constitution of the United States as a sacred document. To me its words are akin to the revelations of God, for God has placed his stamp of approval on the Constitution of this land.

I rode horseback three miles each way to get to high school, and in bad weather it was a problem sometimes to make my eight o'clock class on time. Like others, I often missed school to help on the farm, especially in the fall, until after harvest, and in the spring, during planting season.

I say to you with all the fervor of my soul that God intended men to be free. Rebellion against tyranny is a righteous cause. It is an enormous evil for any man to be enslaved to any system contrary to his own will. For that reason men, 200 years ago, pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. No nation which has kept the commandments of God has ever perished, but I say to you that once freedom is lost, only blood - human blood - will win it back.

I speak of honor-your honor to God-your honor to country-your honor to self. I sincerely believe it to be the cure to most of our ills, both on a national or individual basis.

I testify that wickedness is rapidly expanding in every segment of our society. It is more highly organized, more cleverly disguised, and more powerfully promoted than ever before. Secret combinations lusting for power, gain, and glory are flourishing. A secret combination that seeks to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries is increasing its evil influence and control over America and the entire world.

I testify to you that God's hand has been in our destiny. I testify that freedom as we know it today is being threatened as never before in our history. I further witness that this land-the Americas-must be protected, its Constitution upheld, for this is a land foreordained to be the Zion of our God. He expects us as members of the Church and bearers of His priesthood to do all we can to preserve our liberty.

It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters.

It is a truism that children need more of Mother than of money.

It is mother's influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child's basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother's loving example to choose righteousness.

It is my firm belief that the God of Heaven raised up the founding fathers and inspired them to establish the Constitution of this land. This is part of my religious faith. To me this is not just another nation. It is a great and glorious nation with a divine mission to perform for liberty-loving people everywhere.

It is not enough simply to try to resist evil or empty our lives of sin. We must also fill our lives with righteousness

It is not on the pinnacle of success and ease where men and women grow most. It is often down in the valley of heartache and disappointment and reverses where men and women grow.

It is not unusual to hear a religious leader, a philosopher, or a poet refer to man as having a divine spark within him. Such characterizations infer that man possesses great abilities and potentials. We are frequently admonished to develop our capabilities, reach out, and set high goals for ourselves.

It is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read.

I wish that every Latter-day Saint could say and mean it with all his heart: 'I'll go where you want me to go. I'll say what you want me to say. I'll be what you want me to be'. If we could do that, we would be assured of the maximum happiness here and exaltation in the celestial kingdom of God hereafter.

I would rather say whoa to a leader than gittie up.

Just as a man does not desire food until he is hungry, so does he not desire the salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs Christ.

Let us be in a position so we are able to not only feed ourselves through home production and storage, but others as well.

Let us have no further blind devotion to the communist dominated United Nations!

Let us never lose sight of the fact that education is a preparation for life - and that preparing for life is far more than knowing how to make a living or how to land on the moon. Preparing for life means building personal integrity, developing a sound sense of values, increasing the capacity and willingness to serve. Education must have its roots in moral principles. If we lose sight of that fact in our attempt to match our educational system against that of the materialists, we shall have lost far more than we could possibly gain.

Let your minds be filled with the goal of being like the Lord, and you will crowd out depressing thoughts as you anxiously seek to know Him and do His will.

Making decisions is probably the most important thing people ever do. Nothing happens until someone makes a decision.

Man is at his best when complimented by the influence of a good woman.

Many a man in his hour of trial has turned to the Book of Mormon and been enlightened, enlivened, and comforted. The psalms in the Old Testament have a special food for the soul of one in distress.

Many of us have a tendency to forget the Gracious Hand which has preserved our nation, enriched it, strengthened it. Many of us imagine in the foolishness of pride, that our manifold blessings are due not to God's goodness, but to our own wisdom and virtue. Too many of us have been so drunk with self-sufficiency as no longer to feel the need of prayer.

Marriage. . . is the most glorious and most exalting principle of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  No ordinance is of more importance and none more sacred and more necessary to the eternal joy of man.  Faithfulness to the marriage covenant brings the fullest joy here and glorious rewards hereafter.

Meditation on a passage of scripture... led a young boy into a grove of trees to commune with his heavenly Father. That is what opened the heavens in this dispensation

Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can.

Modesty in dress and language and deportment is a true mark of refinement and a hallmark of a virtuous Latter-day Saint woman.

More than ever before, we need to learn and apply the principles of economic self-reliance. We do not know when the crisis involving sickness or unemployment may affect our own circumstances. We do know that the Lord has decreed global calamities for the future and has warned and forewarned us to be prepared. For this reason the Brethren have repeatedly stressed a 'back to basics' program for temporal and spiritual welfare.