Brigham Young

“ In reality, we are nothing only what the Lord makes us. In a short time, if the Lord is for us, all will be right.
Take things upon natural principles, and I will organize this community so as to be prepared for any and every emergency. And the truth compels me to say, about our enemies that all hell are crying to come here and I must either say, Come in here and practise your principles of death and destruction, or I must say, I will contend against you, though I have prayed most fervently for the Lord to keep that event off. ”

“ It makes me rejoice that we are now in a situation that, if this people will live as they should live, they will no more have to be driven as we have been hitherto. Should we ever be obliged to leave our houses, the decree of my heart is that there shall naught be left for our enemies but the ashes of all that will burn. ”

“ If the Lord sees that we need to be afflicted, he can apply the rod. I do not say this to urge you to your duty; for if you will not live your religion for the blessings that God bestows upon it, you will not live it anyhow; and the man who will not live his religion ought to be damned. Never serve God because you are afraid of hell; but live your religion, because it is calculated to give you eternal life. ”

“ Men study to talk a great deal, when at the same time they know but very little, and often even strive to conceal the little they do know. Among its other capabilities, the English language is better adapted than any other in existence to the using of thousands of words without conveying an idea.
If the Government of the United States have sent soldiers to this Territory, I do not know it; for I have had no official notice of such a circumstance, and you will perceive that I treat them accordingly. If they are sent by Government, they are sent expressly to destroy this people ”

“ If it does, and we love our religion, let me tell you that we will increase faster than our enemies will. This Territory and people are perfectly able to defend themselves, with the help of our God. They are perfectly able to set apart men of the right stripe and maintain a standing army that can keep off the armies of our enemies. And if the world combine against us, so we are but one, then all will go on well and work together for our good. ”

“ I instance those examples to show you that, if you will give me the right kind of men, I will take a few hundred of them and be at the defiance of the armies of the world; and that, too, upon natural principles. If God is for us, that of course makes us still stronger; but if he is against us, let us not strive to do anything in opposition to his will: let righteousness triumph. ”

“ Colonel Alexander preached to me a little, stating in his letter, "I warn you that the bloodshed in this contest will be upon your head." But that warning gave me no thought. But if the blood of those soldiers is shed, it will be upon the heads of their officers.
What they will do I neither know nor care; for it will be just as the Lord God wills it. If he sees that we need their substance, he will turn things to that end; and if he designs them to be wiped out, he will either cause them to undertake to come here or will overrule some other plan to accomplish that end. ”

“ The President of the United States, his Cabinet, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the priests of the various religious sects and their followers have joined in a crusade to waste away the last vestige of truth and righteousness from this earth, and especially from this part of it. Yes, they have joined together; and we have to maintain truth and righteousness, virtue and holiness, or they will be driven from the earth. With us, it is the kingdom of God, or nothing ”

“ You hear a great many people talk about a virtuous life. If you could know what an honourable, manly, upright, virtuous life is, you might reduce it to this—Learn the will of the Lord and do it; for he has the keys of life and death, and his mandates should be obeyed, and that is eternal life. ”

“ If they undertake to send fifty thousand men to Utah, I will venture to say that they cannot raise so large a company in the United States but what would cut each other's throats before they travelled a thousand miles across the Plains, to say nothing about any other persons molesting them. ”

“ As soon as they start to come into our settlements, let sleep depart from their eyes and slumber from their eyelids until they sleep in death, for they have been warned and forewarned that we will not tamely submit to being destroyed. ”

“ I have been told that the first artillery company, upon its arrival at Laramie, loaded up all the grain they could haul to feed their mule teams; and when they reached the Devil's Gate they sent forward after their grain from their freight trains, and then they had not enough to last them to Ham's Fork. It is impossible for them to load up teams with sufficient forage to last them to Green River; and the more men they send the more there are to eat up what the mule and ox-trains haul; and the consequence is that the more men they send the worse it is all the time. ”

“ We have preached the Gospel to Saints and strangers, when strangers would come and tarry long enough to hear it. We do not want to stand here and talk about war. There is nothing so repugnant to my feelings as to injure or destroy. ”

“ As the Lord God lives, we will waste our enemies by millions, if they send them here to destroy us, and not a man of us be hurt. That is the method I intend to pursue. Do you want to know what is going to be done with the enemies now on our borders? ”

“ Bitter and relentless war was waged against Joseph Smith before he had received the plates of the Book of Mormon; and from that time till now the wicked have only fallen back at times to gain strength and learn how to attack the kingdom of God. ”

“ I wish the people to hasten and gather together and secure all that they have raised in the fields; and when this little skirmish is over, I am going to instruct the people to begin to prepare for going into the mountains, also to raise their grain another year, and to secure that which we now have by putting it where our enemies cannot find it. ”

“ There is already enough raised in many places this season to supply the people from two to three years, and I wish them to take care of it; though I expect that in all probability we will raise a great many crops before our enemies again attempt to come here to disturb us; and I expect that we are fully able to defend ourselves, and that our enemies will not be able to come within a hundred miles of us. ”

“ I know that those who have been in our past troubles—those who have been in the midst of death and destitution can bear testimony that they never enjoyed so much of the Spirit of the Lord at any other time in their lives. ”

“ We have the privilege of honouring the stations we are in; we have the privilege, in the Lord's hands, of preparing for exaltation. We are compared to the making of pottery upon the wheel; but the Lord never intended to show in that comparison that we were helpless beings and had no agency. ”

“ I can answer, No: they are in the mountains; they are in the cold and snow; and if they continue, as those officers appear to intend to, upon the side of despotism and mobocracy, they justly ought to be served as we would serve all mobocrats. But we are here and we are free, as brother Kimball has said—just as free, in one sense, as we ever shall be. We need not think that we are always going to be unmolested by the efforts of mobs, until wickedness is swept from this earth. If we live, we shall see the nations of the earth arrayed against this people ”

“ Nothing, only another manifestation of the opposition of the Devil to the kingdom of God. War has been declared against the Saints over twenty-seven years, and our enemies have only fallen back so as to gain strength and pretexts for making another attack. ”

“ You are aware that among the nations the soldiers are never permitted to know anything about the plans of the officers: statesmen withhold from their constituents every policy they possibly can, and the statement of one of them is verily true pertaining to their use of the English language—that is, to secrete ideas instead of revealing them. ”

“ I purpose to have read to you this morning some of the communications that have passed between our enemies and ourselves, for the people are anxious to know the feeling of the two parties; they are very anxious to learn the news. I am perfectly willing that they should know all, for my feelings and yours are very different from those of the world. ”

“ That is the way for every man and woman to feel. When it is necessary, and the Lord calls me to do so, I would just as soon preach about war as anything else, or go and fight a battle as to do anything else. ”

“ It points to that existence that never ends, while the other course leads to destruction, to dissolution, where they will be destroyed from the earth and from the eternities, and return back to the native elements. ”

“ There are a good many here who have not witnessed the scenes of persecution that some of us have. I was asking father Morley, this morning, whether he thought the enemy could now ride into our corn-fields and through our gardens and shoot down our cattle, and plunder and burn our houses, as they did in Missouri.
When the mob in Missouri commenced burning our habitations, we frequently sent to the Governor, petitioning him to stop mobbings ”

“ And if we had seen fit to have sent such men this season, they alone could very easily have so stopped our enemies that they never would have got through the Black Hills. I count five such men equal to twenty-five thousand, and believe that two of them could put ten thousand to flight. ”