I counseled many returning missionaries. I interviewed 1,700 missionaries all over the world. My advice to them is that you should study and prepare for your life's work in a field that you enjoy.

Cooperativeness is not so much learning how to get along with others as taking the kinks out of ourselves, so that others can get along with us.

The effectiveness of an inspired bishop, adviser, or teacher has very little to do with the outward trappings of power or an abundance of this world's goods. The leaders who have the most influence are usually those who set hearts afire with devotion to the truth, who make obedience to duty seem the essence of manhood, who transform some ordinary routine occurrence so that it becomes a vista where we see the person we aspire to be.

A man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - never likely to reach home port. To us comes the signal: chart your course, set your sail, position your rudder, and proceed.

God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.

As we emulate His example, we will bless lives, including our own.

I think there is no place in the world where I feel closer to the Lord than in one of His holy temples.