With free agency there comes responsibility. If a man is to be rewarded for righteousness and punished for evil, then common justice demands that he be given the power of independent action. A knowledge of good and evil is essential to a man's progress on earth. 

If he were coerced to do right at all times, or were helplessly enticed to commit sin, he would, he would merit neither a blessing for the first nor a punishment for the second.

Man's responsibility is correspondingly operative with his free agency. Actions in harmony with divine laws and the laws of nature will bring happiness, and those in opposition to divine truth, misery. Man is responsible not only for every deed, but also for every idle word and thought.

Personal ministry can answer prayers. We can offer a daily prayer that enlists the help of the Lord Jesus Christ as we ask: “Help me to be the answer to someone’s prayer today.” The Lord consistently answers this prayer as we tune our eyes and ears to discerning the needs of those around us. . . .

As you leave the Marriott Center today, you will have immediate opportunities to practice your personal ministry. Please, never suppress a generous thought.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

The brain can change as a result of the thoughts we think, as with Pascual-Leone's virtual piano players. This has important implications for health: something as seemingly insubstantial as a thought can affect the very stuff of the brain, altering neuronal connections in a way that can treat mental illness or, perhaps, lead to a greater capacity for empathy and compassion. It may even dial up the supposedly immovable happiness set point.

This Church came about as a result of intellectual curiosity. We believe in education, and we spend a substantial part of our budget on the education of our young people. We expect them to think. We expect them to investigate. We expect them to use their minds and dig deeply for knowledge in all fields. If we have a motto, it is this, "The glory of God is intelligence."

Man has, through the richness of the intellectual quest, become more knowing, more clever and more skeptical. But we have not become more profound or more reverent. Nor have we found a way to put our learning in the context of the eternal.

The third-rate mind is happy only when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is happy only when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is happy only when it is thinking.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging; it is the skin of living thought and changes from day to day as does the air around us.

No event, knowledge, or influence has had a greater impact upon me during my 54 years of mortality than repeatedly reading about, studying in depth, and searching for connections, patterns, and themes related to the doctrine of the Atonement. This central, saving doctrine, over time, gradually has distilled upon my soul as the dews from heaven; has influenced my thoughts, words, and deeds (see Mosiah 4:30); and literally has become for me a well of living water.

Thought is the fountain of speech.