Now, I am not caring today, for myself, anything at all about a political party tag. So far as I am concerned, I want to know what the man stands for....When I find out these things, then I know who it is who should receive my support, and I care not what his party tag is....Today, our duty transcends party allegiance; our duty today is allegiance to the Constitution as it was given to us by the Lord.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.