It is the duty of a woman to be obedient to her husband, and unless she is, I would not give a damn for all her queenly right and authority, nor for her either, if she will quarrel and lie about the work of God and the principles of plurality. Heber C Kimball, Journal of Discourses IV:82
I will say that I was naturally begotten; so was my father, also my Saviour Jesus Christ. According to the Scriptures, he is the first begotten of his father in the flesh, and there was nothing unnatural about it. Heber C Kimball, Journal of Discourses VIII:211
President Lincoln would be in the presidential Chair untill He had destroyed the Nation. The North will never have power to Crush the South. No never. The Lord will give the South power to fight the North until they will destroy Each other. Heber C Kimball, cited Wilford Woodruff’s Journal VI:216
You call us fools; but the day will be, gentlemen and ladies, whether you belong to this Church or not, when you will prize brother Joseph Smith as the Prophet of the Living God, and look upon him as a God, and also upon Brigham Young, our Governor. Heber C Kimball, Journal of Discourses V:88
You might as well deny Mormonism and turn away from it as to oppose plural marriage. Let the Presidency of this Church, and the Twelve Apostles and all the authorities unite and say with one voice that they would oppose that doctrine, and the whole of them would be damned. What are you opposing it for? It is a principle that God has established for the human family! Heber C Kimball, Journal of Discourses V:203
Joseph Smith made it up in the nineteenth century. He made it up in seventeenth-century English although writing in the nineteenth century. I mean it’s got charlatan written absolutely all over it. Professor Richard Dawkins, interview Bill Mayer 2nd October 2009
Christianity, even fundamentalist Christianity, is substantially less ridiculous than Mormonism ... Christian scriptures are genuinely ancient. The translations from Hebrew and Greek that Christians use are in a language contemporary with the translators. The Book of Mormon is not ancient and the language of its alleged translation is ludicrously anachronistic. It was dictated by Joseph Smith, a man with a track record of charlatanry, purporting to translate it from ‘Reformed Egyptian’ with the aid of a magic stone in a magic hat ... The English in which Smith dictated it is not the English of his own time (1830) but the English of more than two centuries earlier. As Mark Twain cuttingly observed, if you remove all occurrences of ‘It came to pass’ the book would be reduced to a pamphlet. The language in which it is written proclaims it to be a palpable fake – as if Smith’s cock-and-bull story of golden plates hadn’t already given the game away. Smith obviously was steeped in the King James Bible, and he made up a whole new set of ‘scriptures’ in the same style of English ... Setting aside the mountebankery of Smith’s English style, many of the core beliefs of Mormonism run counter to everything we now know for certain about the colonisation of America. DNA evidence, for example, utterly refutes the claim that Native Americans are ‘a remnant of the House of Israel’. The idea that Jesus visited America is preposterous, and the idea that Adam and Eve did too is even worse (it is at least arguable that Jesus existed). The traditional Mormon belief in the inferiority of black people (only lately renounced for reasons of political expediency) is as scientifically inaccurate as it is obnoxious. The great ‘prophet’ Brigham Young even prescribed the death penalty for inter-racial marriage. Richard Dawkins
I did not see them as I do that pencil-case, yet I saw them with the eye of faith; I saw them just as distinctly as I see anything around me – though at the time they were covered with a cloth. Martin Harris
I never saw the golden plates, only in a visionary or entranced state. Martin Harris, original witness
During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of traveling, and the animals upon which they rode, their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them. Lucy Smith, mother of Joseph
The plates were secreted about three miles from home ... Joseph, on coming to them, took them from their secret place, and, wrapping them in his linen frock, placed them under his arm and started for home.
After proceeding a short distance, he thought it would be more safe to leave the road and go through the woods. Traveling some distance after he left the road, he came to a large windfall, and as he was jumping over a log, a man sprang up from behind it, and gave him a heavy blow with a gun. Joseph turned around and knocked him down, then ran at the top of his speed. About half a mile further he was attacked again in the same manner as before; he knocked this man down in like manner as the former, and ran on again; and before he reached home he was assaulted the third time. In striking the last one he dislocated his thumb, which, however, he did not notice until he came within sight of the house, when he threw himself down in the corner of the fence in order to recover his breath. As soon as he was able, he arose and came to the house. Lucy Smith, History of Joseph Smith by His Mother pp.107-108
In October of 1841, Zina received a written message from Joseph Smith that an angel from God had appeared to him with a drawn sword and told Joseph that he would lose ‘his position and his life’ if he did not establish polygamy and marry Zina. Thus, Zina, after sincere prayer, finally acquiesced to marry the prophet Joseph Smith on 27th October 1841, despite the fact that she was seven months pregnant with Henry Jacob’s child. X-Man, board post 30th October 2006, ‘Consider the Sad Story of Early Mormon Convert, Henry Jacobs, and How Polygamy Affected His Life’
[Doctor Bennett] would give them medicine to produce abortions, provided they should become pregnant. Hyrum Smith affidavit, cited Official History of the Church 5:71
Joseph was commanded to take more wives and he waited until an angel with a drawn sword stood before him and declared that if he longer delayed fulfilling that command he would slay him. Hyrum Smith, cited Benjamin F Johnson’s letter to George S Gibbs 1903
In the group of Smith’s well-documented wives, eleven (33%) were 14 to 20 years old when they married him. Nine wives (27%) were twenty-one to thirty years old. Eight wives (24%) were in Smith’s own peer group, ages 31 to 40. In the group aged 41 to 50, there is a substantial drop off: 2 wives, or 6%, and 3 (9%) in the group aged 51 to 60. Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness
Prescindia, who was Norman Buell’s wife and simultaneously a plural wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith, said that she did not know whether her husband Norman or the Prophet was the father of her son, Oliver. And a glance at a photo of Oliver shows a strong resemblance to Emma Smith’s boys. Mary Ettie V Smith, Fifteen Years Among the Mormons p34; viz also Fawn M Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
Had I been treated with the cruelty and neglect which has fallen to the lot of so many unfortunate women in Utah, I should probably have been in my grave to-day, or in that Asylum, which has been provided by the Church-situated on a lonely hill at a sufficient distance from the city, so that the cries of the unhappy, ill-treated, insane women should not be heard. Fanny Stenhouse, ‘Tell It All: The Story of a Life’s experience in Mormonism: an autobiography’
Again, if a pure Gentile firmly believes the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and yields obedience to it, in such a case I will give you the words of the Prophet Joseph: ‘The effect of the Holy Ghost upon a Gentile, is to purge out the old blood, and make him actually of the seed of Abraham.’ Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses II:269
Any man having one drop of the seed of Cane in him cannot hold the priesthood and if no other Prophet ever spake it before I will say it now in the name of Jesus Christ, I know it is true and they know it. The Negro cannot hold one particle of Government ... Let me consent today to mingle my seed with the seed of Cane. It would bring the same curse upon me. And it would upon any man. And if any man mingles his seed with the seed of Cane the only way he could get rid of it or have salvation would be to come forward and have his head cut off and spill his blood upon the ground. It would also take the life of his children. Brigham Young, cited Wilford Woodruff Journal January 1852
[apostates] become gray-haired, wrinkled, and black, just like the Devil. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses V:332
As I observed, on the evening of the 14th at the social Hall, ‘think brethren, think’ but do not think so far that you cannot think back again … In the eastern country there was a man who used to go crazy, at times, and then come to his senses again. One of his neighbors asked him what made him go crazy; he replied, ‘I get to thinking, and thinking, until finally I think so far that I am not always able to think back again.’ Can you think too much for the spirit which is put in the tabernacle? You can … Let this intelligent part labor to excess, and it will eventually overcome the tabernacle, the equilibrium will be destroyed, and the whole organization deranged. Many people have deranged themselves by thinking too much. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses III:247
But it is not the privilege of a woman to dictate the husband, and tell how or how many he shall take, or what he shall do with them when he gets them, but it is the duty of the woman to submit cheerfully. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses XVII:159