Gordon B. Hinckley Quotes

The best place to have some food set aside is within our homes, together with a little money in savings. The best welfare program is our own welfare program. Five or six cans of wheat in the home are better than a bushel in the welfare granary. ... We can begin with a one week's food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. I am speaking now of food to cover basic needs.

Learn to sustain yourselves; lay up grain and flour, and save it against a day of scarcity.

Let every head of household see to it that he has on hand enough food and clothing and, where possible, fuel also for at least a year ahead.

Food production is just one part of the repeated emphasis that you store a provision of food which will last for at least a year wherever it is legally permissible to do so.

Recent surveys of Church members have shown a serious erosion in the number of families who have a year's supply of life's necessities. Most members plan to do it. Too few have begun... It is our sacred duty to care for our families, including our extended families.

For over forty years, in a spirit of love, members of the Church have been counseled to be thrifty and self-reliant; to avoid debt; pay tithes and a generous fast offering; be industrious; and have sufficient food, clothing, and fuel on hand to last at least one year. Today there are compelling reasons to reemphasize this counsel.

We want you to be ready with your personal storehouses filled with at least a year's supply. You don't argue why it cannot be done; you just plan to organize and get it done.

The best food storage is not in welfare grain elevators but in sealed cans and bottles in the homes of our people. What a gratifying thing it is to see cans of wheat and rice and beans under the beds or in the pantries of women who have taken welfare responsibility into their own hands. Such food may not be tasty, but it will be nourishing if it has to be used.

I really don't require a whole lot in life.

We can do things the cheap way, the simple way, for the short-term and without regard for the future. Or, we can make the extra effort, do the hard work, absorb the criticism and make decisions that will cause a better future.

I live a very simple life.

The problem with a purely collective system is not only that it requires economic growth, and the right sort of demographic trends, but that it prevents people thinking about their futures in a responsible way.

Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is, gardening is just the opposite - it is, or should be, a central, basic expression of human life.

Going underground is no answer. What kind of world would they come up to? What would they use for air? What would they use for food? ... What would they use for people?

A store of grain, Oh king is the best of treasures. A gem put in your mouth will not support life.

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take many small steps.

Priesthood quorums teach and assist their members to attain good health, financial stability, and a year's supply of food and clothing. They also teach their members to be self-reliant and to give their time, talents, and means in behalf of the Church, community, and needy.

I'm obsessed with not chucking away food. I'm lucky enough to have a gardener, so we grow sweetcorn, tomatoes, beetroots, cabbages, pumpkins, lettuce. I'm trying to get into blanching it and freezing so I don't have to buy veg over the winter, but then you need loads of freezers, and that's not ideal.

I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected.

I believe that at some point we should come up with a business model that would make us sustainable.

Whenever you take on a project, there should be an exit policy. You cannot help people forever.

There are no short and easy paths to a long and lasting happiness.

The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high... but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.

Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced. Payment of this price cannot be avoided; it can only be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a warning that we have delayed nearly too long.

I know the American Library Association has models for working with the poor. They do have that, and I think that we really need to put our efforts - if we want to think long-range and invest in the community so that we don't have to, you know, invest in prisons - into making a change, because I know that the library can make a change in a life, because it made a change in mine.