Man unquestionably has impressive powers... But after all our obedience and good works, we cannot be saved from the effects of our sins without the grace extended by the atonement of Jesus Christ... Man cannot earn his own salvation.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the inability of individuals to achieve salvation through their own efforts alone and the necessity of divine grace.
Dallin H. Oaks expresses the idea that while humans possess great abilities and strengths, their actions and good deeds are insufficient to secure their salvation. It highlights the belief that salvation is a divine gift that comes through the atonement of Jesus Christ, rather than a result of human merit, underscoring a theological perspective on grace and redemption.
In practice
In a sermon about the importance of humility and reliance on divine grace.
Tolerance obviously requires a non-contentious manner of relating toward one another’s differences. But tolerance does not require abandoning one’s standards or one’s opinions on political or public policy choices. Tolerance is a way of reacting to diversity, not a command to insulate it from examination.
I testify of our Savior, Jesus Christ, whose teachings and example we seek to follow. He invites all of us who are heavy laden to come unto Him, to learn of Him, to follow Him, and thus to find rest to our souls.
The most powerful teaching of children is by the example of their parents.
We should refrain from anything that seems to be a final judgment of any person...the Lord alone has the capacity to judge...And, in all of this we must remember the command to forgive.
In order to ask with real intent or to act with full purpose of heart, we must always make an accompanying commitment.
My single young friends, we counsel you to channel your associations with the opposite sex into dating patterns that have the potential to mature into marriage, not hanging-out patterns that only have the prospect to mature into team sports like touch football. Marriage is not a group activity—at least not until the children come along in goodly numbers
Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.
The Holocaust teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason.
All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.
For no man can forbid the spark nor tell whence it may come.
Although a biologist, I must confess I do not understand how life came about... I consider that life only starts at the level of a functional cell. The most primitive cells may require at least several hundred different specific biological macro-molecules. How such already quite complex structures may have come together, remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to this problem.
We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
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