David O. McKay Quotes

Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

… the field of action is not the field of intellect, it is the field of character; and change or development of character is always slow work.

Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.

I take it to be from the greatest extremes, both in virtue and in vice, that the uniformly virtuous and reformed in life can derive the greatest and most salutary truths and impressions.

Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.

Praise makes good men better and bad men worse.

Great men grow.

Men become old, but they never become good.

Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die. But, once realise what the true object is in life — that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds' — but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man — and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!

In order for good to blossom it must be cultivated and exercised by constant practice, and to be truly righteous there is required a daily pruning of the evil growth of our characters by a daily repen- tance from sin.

I just want to be as good a person as I can be.

True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.

Unless knowledge is transformed into wisdom, and wisdom is expressed in character; education is a wasteful process.

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world.

Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

There's no doubt West Point impacted who I am... It has an enormous emphasis, not only on military aspects, but character development. Whether it's the honor code, or the interactions you have, both with the cadet leadership and the academy leadership, every place you are is a character test.

Man should be ever better than he seems.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take with us.

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.