Chapter 3

Selected Quotes

· “I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest danger to be feared.”

-Thomas Jefferson

· “These are the hard times in which a genius would wish to live. Great necessities call forth great leaders.”

-Abigail Adams

1790, in a letter to

Thomas Jefferson

· “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

· “If there is any one thing that will bring peace and contentment into the human heart, and into the family, it is to live within our means. And if there is any one thing that is grinding and discouraging and disheartening, it is to have debts and obligations that one cannot meet.”

-Heber J. Grant

· So many of our people are living on the very edge of their incomes. In fact, some are living on borrowings. We have witnessed in recent weeks wide and fearsome swings in the markets of the world. The economy is a fragile thing. A stumble in the economy in Jakarta or Moscow can immediately affect the entire world. It can eventually reach down to each of us as individuals. There is a portent of stormy weather ahead to which we had better give heed.”

-Gordon B. Hinkley

· Thrift and Industry

“In today’s fast-paced, money crazed society, there are attitudes regarding money and possessions about which we should all be concerned. Home equity loans and second mortgages can be had at the snap of one’s fingers. Credit cards and other kinds of plastic money are available to nearly everyone over eighteen. Borrowing money is made to appear effortless and desirable, with never a mention of the responsibility to repay. Seductive advertising strives to persuade us that we deserve to have it all and to have it now, regardless of the cost. There is a lack of self-discipline and financial self-control that promises future doom.”

· “Fix it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”

· “The position of this church on the subject of communism has never changed. We consider it the greatest satanical threat to peace, prosperity, and the spread of God’s work among men that exists on the face of the earth.”

-David O. McKay

April 9, 1966