One form of speech that was widely restricted in England was the law of seditious libel that made criticizing of the government a crime. The King was above public criticism and that statements critical of the government were forbidden, according to the English Court of the Star Chamber. Truth was not a defense to seditious libel because the goal was to prevent and punish all condemnation of the government.

The notion of "freedom of the press" that later was enshrined in the United States Constitution is generally traced to the seditious libel prosecution of John Peter Zenger by the colonial governor of New York in 1735. Zenger was acquitted after his lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued to the jury (contrary to established English law) that there was no libel in publishing the truth. Yet even after this celebrated case, colonial governors and assemblies asserted the power to prosecute and even imprison printers for publishing unapproved views.

During the American Revolution, a free press was identified by Revolutionary leaders as one of the elements of liberty that they sought to preserve. The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) proclaimed that "the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments." Similarly, the Constitution of Massachusetts (1780) declared, "The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth." Following these examples, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution restricted Congress from abridging the freedom of the press and the closely associated freedom of speech.

1. The cultural tides in our world run strongly against commitment in family relationships...Divorce has been made legally easy, and childbearing has become unpopular.

2. The leveling effect of the women's movement has contributed to discourage dating. As women's options have increased and some women have become more aggressive, some men have become reluctant to take traditional male initiatives, such as asking for dates, lest they be thought to qualify for the dreaded label "male chauvinist."

3. Hanging out is glamorized on TV programs about singles.

4. The meaning and significance of a "date" has changed in such a way as to price dating out of the market... a date has to be an expensive production.

5. For many years, the church has counseled people not to date before age 16. Perhaps some young adults, especially men, have carried that wise counsel to excess and determined not to date before 26 or maybe even 36.

Men, if you have returned from your mission and you are still following the boy-girl patterns you were counseled to follow when you were 15, it is time to grow up. Gather your courage and look for someone to pair off with. Start with a variety of dates with a variety of young women, and when that phase yields a good prospect, proceed to courtship. It's marriage time. That is what the Lord intends for His young adult sons and daughters. Men have the initiative, and you men should get on with it.

My single young friends, we counsel you to channel your associations with the opposite sex into dating patterns that have the potential to mature into marriage, not hanging-out patterns that only have the prospect to mature into team sports like touch football. Marriage is not a group activity--at least, not until the children come along in goodly numbers.

If you are just marking time waiting for a marriage prospect, stop waiting. You may never have the opportunity for a suitable marriage in this life, so stop waiting and start moving. Prepare yourself for life--even a single life--by education, experience, and planning. Don't wait for happiness to be thrust upon you. Seek it out in service and learning. Make a life for yourself. And trust in the Lord.

have pre-marital sex which will lead to
no temple marriage which might lead to
having fewer children which might lead to
becoming more liberal in their thinking which might lead to
leaving the church thus not paying money to the corporation.

"In order to perform their personal ministries, Church leaders cannot be suspicious and questioning of each of the hundreds of people they meet each year. Ministers of the gospel function best in an atmosphere of trust and love. In that kind of atmosphere, they fail to detect a few deceivers, but that is the price they pay to increase their effectiveness in counseling, comforting, and blessing the hundreds of honest and sincere people they see. It is better for a Church leader to be occasionally disappointed than to be constantly suspicious."

"My second subject of wisdom concerns looking beyond the mark. In the Book of Mormon the Prophet Jacob described a people who “despised the words of plainness, . . . and sought for things . . . they could not understand” (Jacob 4:14). He said this caused them to fall because when persons are “looking beyond the mark,” God takes away plainness and gives them what they soughtОthings they cannot understand.

We see this today. For example, some persons write General Authorities asking when we will be returning to Missouri or how we should plan to build up the New Jerusalem. Others want to know details about the Celestial Kingdom, such as the position of a person who lives a good life but never ever marries.

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. What I do know is that persons worrying about such things are probably neglecting to seek a firmer understanding and a better practice of the basic principles of the gospel that have been given to them with words of plainness by the scriptures and by the servants of the Lord."

"Sisters, don’t fall for the worldly urging that women should emulate men in various masculine characteristics. That is not what the Lord created you to do. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that women should not be doctors or lawyers or any particular occupation that fits their circumstances. To use lawyering as an example, what I am saying is that women should not attempt to be manly lawyers. Nor should women emulate the worldly ways of womanhood. Your destiny is to be a wife and a mother in Zion, not a model and a streetwalker in Babylon."

"When we first married, I was working as a consultant for a publishing house based in Boston. I never cooked except once a year. Poor Elder Oaks. The first few months we were married I burned everything, even grilled cheese sandwiches. I knew very little about housework; I didn’t even know how to match socks. Elder Oaks wears only two colors. black and blue. I called my married sister in tears and asked how to sort them and she told me to go stand by the window."

The book of Job is one of the books of the Old Testament. I do not know which prophet brought it forth. We know that Moses brought forth what’s called the Pentateuch, and it is part of the great religious tradition of Judaism and Christianity. The book of Job I cut quite a bit of slack in where that came from and how literal one takes it because its povenance is quite different than the provenance of the first five books of the Old Testament. The first five books of the Old Testament I give as an example like the New Testament. We know their provenance. Subject to a lot of questions we’d like to have answered, we know who wrote the book of Luke, and who wrote John, and Paul wrote his letters, and so on – a lot about their provenance. They originate with prophets; so did the Pentateuch, so did the Book of Mormon. They’re on the same footing.

Apostle Dallin H. Oaks urged Mormon parents to limit their children's extracurricular activities.

"Team sports and technology toys like video games and the Internet are already winning away the time of our children and youth," Oaks said. "Some young men and women are skipping church youth activities or are unavailable for family time in order to participate in soccer leagues or to pursue various entertainments."

They are "amusing themselves to death," he said, "spiritual death."

"President Gordon B. Hinckley described another kind of lack of context in his talk at October conference two years ago. His example applies to all writings on Church history and biography:?

"'We have those critics who appear to wish to cull out of a vast panorama of information those items which demean and belittle some of the men and women of the past who worked so hard in laying the foundation of this great cause. They find readers of their works who seem to delight in picking up these tidbits, and in chewing them over and relishing them. In so doing they are savoring a pickle, rather than eating a delicious and satisfying dinner of several courses."

"'We recognize that our forebears were human. They doubtless made mistakes. . . . But the mistakes were minor, when compared with the marvelous work which they accomplished. To highlight the mistakes and gloss over the greater good is to draw a caricature. Caricatures are amusing, but they are often ugly and dishonest. A man may have a blemish on his cheek and still have a face of beauty and strength, but if the blemish is emphasized unduly in relation to his other features, the portrait is lacking in integrity. . . .?

"'I do not fear truth. I welcome it. But I wish all of my facts in their proper context, with emphasis on those elements which explain the great growth and power of this organization.' (In Conference Report, Oct. 1983, p. 68; or Ensign, Nov. 1983, p. 46.)?

"In short, readers need to be sensitive to the reality that historical and biographical facts can only contribute to understanding when they are communicated in context.?"

"Satan can even use truth to promote his purposes. Truth can be used unrighteously. Facts, severed from their context, can convey an erroneous impression. Persons who make true statements out of an evil motive, such as those who seek to injure another, use the truth unrighteously. A person who preaches the truths of the gospel 'for the sake of riches and honor' (Alma 1:16) commits the sin of priestcraft. Persons who reveal truths that they hold under obligations of confidentiality, such as medical doctors, or lawyers, or bishops who have heard confessions, are guilty of wrongdoing. And a person who learns some embarrassing fact and threatens to reveal it unless he is paid off commits a crime we call blackmail, even if the threatened disclosure is true.?

"The fact that something is true is not always a justification for communicating it. While instructing the Corinthian Saints not to partake of meat offered in sacrifice to idols, the Apostle Paul explained,?

"'All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not' (1 Corinthians 10:23).?

"By the same token, some things that are true are not edifying or appropriate to communicate. Readers of history and biography should ponder that moral reality as part of their effort to understand the significance of what they read.?"

"As members of the Church, we have the gift of the Holy Ghost. If we will use our spiritual powers of discernment, we will not be misled by the lies and half-truths Satan will circulate in his attempts to deceive us and to thwart the work of God.?"

"Another source of differences in the accounts of different witnesses is the different meanings that different persons attach to words. We have a vivid illustration of this in the recent media excitement about the word salamander in a letter Martin Harris is supposed to have sent to W. W. Phelps over 150 years ago. All of the scores of media stories on that subject apparently assume that the author of that letter used the word salamander in the modern sense of a 'tailed amphibian.'

"One wonders why so many writers neglected to reveal to their readers that there is another meaning of salamander, which may even have been the primary meaning in this context in the 1820s. That meaning, which is listed second in a current edition of Webster's New World Dictionary, is "a spirit supposed to live in fire" (2d College ed. 1982, s.v. "salamander"). Modern and ancient literature contain many examples of this usage.?

"A spirit that is able to live in fire is a good approximation of the description Joseph Smith gave of the angel Moroni: a personage in the midst of a light, whose countenance was "truly like lightning" and whose overall appearance "was glorious beyond description" (Joseph Smith-History 1:32). As Joseph Smith wrote later, "The first sight [of this personage] was as though the house was filled with consuming fire" (History of the Church, 4:536). Since the letter purports only to be Martin Harris's interpretation of what he had heard about Joseph's experience, the use of the words white salamander and old spirit seem understandable.?

"In view of all this, and as a matter of intellectual evaluation, why all the excitement in the media, and why the apparent hand-wringing among those who profess friendship with or membership in the Church? The media should make more complete disclosures, but Latter-day Saint readers should also be more sophisticated in their evaluation of what they read.?"

"The idea that all truth is based on scientific evidence is simply untrue."

"Things of God are spiritually discerned. That knowledge does not come from books or scientific proof."

"When we know spiritual truths by spiritual means, we can know with the same surety its truthfulness, as a scientist when discovering scientific evidence"

"We gain or strengthen a testimony by bearing it."

"We encourage children to define themselves by their growing testimonies, not their athletic or academic achievements."

"Each of us has two distinct channels to God, the first is Governance which is obedience to the leadership, and the second is Personal Testimony which gives us our knowledge in his existence."

“Another way to seek a testimony seems astonishing when compared with the methods of obtaining other knowledge. We gain or strengthen a testimony by bearing it. Someone even suggested that some testimonies are better gained on the feet bearing them than on the knees praying for them.”

“I have met persons who told me they have never had a witness from the Holy Ghost because they have never felt their bosom ‘burn within’ them. What does a ‘burning in the bosom’ mean? Does it need to be a feeling of caloric heat, like the burning produced by combustion? If that is the meaning, I have never had a burning in the bosom. Surely, the word ‘burning’ in this scripture signifies a feeling of comfort and serenity” (Ensign,Mar. 1997, 13)