Quotes from Ezra Taft Benson

Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers. The proud wish God would agree with them. They aren't interested in changing their opinions to agree with God's.

Try as you may, you cannot put the Lord in your debt. For every time you try to do His will, He simply pours out more blessings upon you.

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. He can deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their soals, and pour out peace.

Bad experience is a school that only fools keep going to.

Periodic fasting can help clear up the mind and strengthen the body and the spirit.

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ would take the slums out of people, and then they would take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.

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. He can deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, and pour out peace.

Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.

When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.

You are free to choose, but you are not free to alter the consequences of your decisions.

When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.

When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives.

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

You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible!

some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.

God loves us. He's watching us, he wants us to succeed, and we'll know someday that he has not left one thing undone for the eternal welfare of each of us. If we only knew it, there are heavenly hosts pulling for us -- friends in heaven that we can't rememer now, who yearn for our victory.

Nothing will surprise us more than when we get to heaven and see the Father and realize how well we know Him and how familiar His face is to us.

True repentance involves a change of heart and not just a change of behavior.

While you are going through your trial, you can recall your past victories and count the blessings that you do have with a sure hope of greater ones to allow if you are faithful.

Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government.

Do not make your mind a dumping ground for other people's garbage.

The proud wish God would agree with them. They are not interested in changing their opinions to agree with God's.

The devil knows that if the elders of Israel should ever wake up, they could step forth and help preserve freedom and extend the gospel. Therefore the devil has concentrated, and to a large extent successfully, in neutralizing much of the priesthood. He has reduced them to Sleeping Giants.

Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar His face is to us.