We believe in honesty, morality, and purity; but when they enact tyrannical laws, forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we cannot submit. God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven and against the Government...Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been banded down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it. No nation on the earth can prevent it, nor all the nations of the earth combined...I defy the United States; I will obey God.

It is necessary men should be tried and purged and purified and made perfect through suffering.

Tis a mad world, my masters.

Where did this commandment come from in relation to polygamy? It also came from God... When I see any of our people, men or women, opposing a principle of this kind... I consider them apostates.

Supposing I live, I have got a work to do; and if I die, I shall still be engaged in the cause of Zion . . . If we live, we live to God; and if we die, we die to God; and we are God's, any way.

We are accused here of polygamy, and actions the most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit to belief.

By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers - backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, et al. - have ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.