Thomas S. Monson Quotes

I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.

We are pioneers and the history of pioneers is not that good.

Unfortunately, pioneers will always pave the way with sacrifices.

I'm the last in the line of Russells and Chamberlains.

I come from a long line of Sinners like me

I wanted to put all my family stories down for my girls, and I remember everything so vividly. I just wanted to put everything down while I still can remember it all.

Well, pioneers always suffer. I don't care who is the first to embark upon things. For instance, settlers that settled the West, Western Canada and the U.S... they went though hell doing it, but it had to be done.

I certainly have played women who have a pioneer spirit and longing for adventure.

My life and the life of my family has to do with exploration, with adventure. My grandfather was the first man in the stratosphere, and my father was the first to touch the deepest point in the ocean... For me, adventure and exploration is something in the blood.

Your father never sold his country—never forget my dying words.... This country holds your father's body. Never sell the bones of your father and mother.

Never did I charge into battle with the hope of returning safe This is the way of my ancestors The roots beget the stems

My father was an air officer in the Second World War. My brother was a marine in Vietnam. When I was given this opportunity, I leapt at the chance because I thought it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what my friends were doing.

I once interviewed my grandma for a class project about the Second World War. After 70 years filled with marriage, children, grandchildren, death, poverty and triumph, the thing about which she was unquestionably the proudest and most excited was that she and her family did their part during the war.

We shot the video for 'Broken' where both my parents grew up. There was always a strong sense of serving our country in the neighborhood - my father and all my uncles served, and most of them enlisted.

My father was a pioneer and a leader in the things he did and the way he did them.

My fascination with war is because my dad was in World War II, and my brother was in Vietnam.

We're kind of a guinea pig generation.

My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral

We've become a nation of indoor cats, he'd said. A nation of doubters, worriers, overthinkers. Thank God these weren't the kind of Americans who settled this country. They were a different breed! They crossed the country in wagons with wooden wheels! People croaked along the way, and they barely stopped. Back then, you buried your dead and kept moving.

Oddly enough, my mother was born in Southampton. I have roots in Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor. My grandfather, her father, Stefano Rullo, when he came from Naples, he went to Pennsylvania and worked coal mines.

He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.

How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?

I'm from such an old family, it's been condemned.

Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it.