Brigham Young Quotes

111 Sourced Quotes

Which would you part with first-your tobacco, your whisky, or your religion? Your tea, or your religion? Which would you shake hands with and bid good-bye for ever-your coffee, or your religion? I should think I had disgraced the man that stands before you this day, if I loved any object on the earth better than I love my religion and my God.

Brigham Young
I will now say, not only to our delegate to Congress, but to the Elders who leave the body of the Church, that he thought that all the cats and kittens were let out of the bag when brother Pratt went back last fall, and published the Revelation concerning the plurality of wives: it was thought there was no other cat to let out. But allow me to tell you, Elders of Israel, and delegates to Congress, you may expect an eternity of cats, that have not yet escaped from the bag. Bless your souls, there is no end to them, for if there is not one thing, there will always be another.

Brigham Young
You will probably have what is called a Christian Church here; they will not admit that we are Christians, but they cannot think us further from the plan of salvation as revealed from heaven than we know them to be, so we are even on that ground, as far as it goes.

Brigham Young
I suppose that, if we were in the congregations of some of our Christian fellow-countrymen, we would not hear any children crying. I believe they have none in some societies. I am very happy to hear the children crying when it is really necessary and they cannot be kept from it. One thing is certain, wherever we go there is a proof that the people are keeping the commandments of the Lord, especially the first one—to multiply and replenish the earth.

Brigham Young
I shall not cease learning while I live, nor when I arrive in the spirit-world… and when I again receive my body, I shall …still continue my researches

Brigham Young
The Lord chose Joseph Smith, called upon him at fourteen years of age, gave him vision, and led him along, guided and directed him in his obscurity.

Brigham Young
Will the Constitution be destroyed? No: it will be held inviolate by this people; and, as Joseph Smith said, "The time will come when the destiny of the nation will hang upon a single thread. At that critical juncture, this people will step forth and save it from the threatened destruction." It will be so.

Brigham Young
We shall continue to do it until God tell us to stop, or until we pass into sin and iniquity, which will never be.

Brigham Young
I say, if you want to enjoy exquisitely, become a Latter-day Saint, and then live the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

Brigham Young
Just ask yourselves, historians, when was monogamy introduced on to the face of the earth? When those buccaneers, who settled on the peninsula where Rome now stands, could not steal women enough to have two or three apiece, they passed a law that a man should have but one woman. And this started monogamy and the downfall of the plurality system. In the days of Jesus, Rome, having dominion over Jerusalem, they carried out the doctrine more or less. This was the rise, start and foundation of the doctrine of monogamy; and never till then was there a law passed, that we have any knowledge of, that a man should have but one wife.

Brigham Young
Do you think that people will obey the truth because it is true, unless they love it? No, they will not. Truth is obeyed when it is loved.

Brigham Young
Gold and silver grow, and so does every other kind of metal, the same as the hair upon my head, or the wheat in the field; they do not grow as fast, but they are all the time composing or decomposing

Brigham Young
My experience has taught me, and it has become a principle with me, that it is never any benefit to give out and out, to man or woman, money, food, clothing, or anything else. If they are able-bodied and can work and earn what they need, when there is anything on earth for them to do. This is my principle and I try to act upon it. To pursue a contrary course would ruin any community in the world and make them idlers.

Brigham Young
I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands.

Brigham Young
Children need directing and teaching what is right in a kind, affectionate manner How often we see parents demand obedience, good behavior, kind words, pleasant looks, a sweet voice and a bright eye from a child or children when they themselves are full of bitterness and scolding! How inconsistent and unreasonable this is!

Brigham Young
My business is to obey when the Lord commands, and this is the duty of all mankind.

Brigham Young
Do you think that I am an old man? I could prove to this congregation that I am young; for I could find more girls who would choose me for a husband than can carry any of the young men.

Brigham Young
I wanted to thunder and roar out the Gospel to all nations. It burned in my bones like fire pent up... Nothing would satisfy me but to cry abroad in the world, what the Lord was doing in the latter days.

Brigham Young
I have known a great many men who have left this Church for whom there is no chance whatever for exaltation, but if their blood had been spilled, it would have been better for them. The wickedness and ignorance of the nations forbid this principle's being in full force, but the time will come when the law of God will be in full force.

Brigham Young
I do not want "Mormonism" to become popular; I would not, if I could, make it as popular as the Roman Catholic Church is in Italy, or as the Church of England is in England, because the wicked and ungodly would crowd into it in their sins.

Brigham Young
What is the duty of a Latter-day Saint? To do all the good he can upon the earth.

Brigham Young
Every trial and experience you have passed through is necessary for your salvation.

Brigham Young
He is our Father - the Father of our Spirits, and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are, and is now an exalted being.

Brigham Young
Some, in their curiosity, will say, "But you Mormons have another Bible! Do you believe in the Old and New Testaments?" I answer we do believe in the Old and New Testaments, and we have also another book, called the Book of Mormon. What are the doctrines of the Book of Mormon? The same as those of the Bible.

Brigham Young
I believe the Father came down from heaven, as the apostles said he did, and begat the Saviour of the world; for he is the ONLY-begotten of the Father, which could not be if the Father did not actually beget him in person.... I believe the Father came down in His tabernacle and begat Jesus Christ.

Brigham Young
The Christian world, I discovered, was like the captain and crew of a vessel on the ocean without a compass, and tossed to and fro whithersoever the wind listed to blow them. When the light came to me, I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness

Brigham Young
The greatest mystery a man ever learned, is to know how to control the human mind, and bring every faculty and power of the same in subjection to Jesus Christ; this is the greatest mystery we have to learn while in these tabernacles of clay.

Brigham Young
Not a desire, act, wish, or thought does the Holy Ghost indulge in contrary to that which is dictated by the Father

Brigham Young
My knowledge is, if you will follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, every man and woman will be put in possession of the Holy Ghost.... They will know things that are, that will be, and that have been. They will understand things in heaven, things on the earth, and things under the earth, things of time, and things of eternity, according to their several callings and capacities.

Brigham Young
No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith...every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, junior, as a passport to their entrance into the mansion where God and Christ are

Brigham Young