Families are central to God’s plan. While friendships are important, nothing compares to the joy of maintaining healthy family relationships, whether everyone is still at home or they are living across the world.
Below are 13 quotes from past and present LDS Church leaders, as well as a few other well-known figures, who have expressed their belief in and support of happy families.
1. “Indeed, nothing is more critically connected to happiness—both our own and that of our children—than how well we love and support one another within the family.” —M. Russell Ballard
2. “The family is the most important organization in time or in eternity. Our purpose in life is to create for ourselves eternal family units.” —Joseph Fielding Smith
3. “The family is one of God’s greatest fortresses against the evils of our day. Help keep your family strong and close and worthy of our Father in Heaven’s blessings. As you do, you will receive faith and strength which will bless your lives forever.” —Ezra Taft Benson
4. “The key to strengthening our families is having the Spirit of the Lord come into our homes. The goal of our families is to be on the strait and narrow path.” —Robert D. Hales
5. “Let us be more determined to make [righteous] homes, to be kinder husbands, more thoughtful wives, more exemplary to our children, determined that in our homes we are going to have just a little taste of heaven here on this earth.” —David O. McKay
6. “Family life is the best method for achieving happiness in this world, and it is a clear pattern given to us from the Lord about what is to be in the next world.” —Spencer W. Kimball
7. “In a world of turmoil and uncertainty, it is more important than ever to make our families the center of our lives and the top of our priorities.” —L. Tom Perry
8. “God’s plan provides a way for family relationships to extend beyond the grave. We can return to the presence of God, eternally united with our families.” —Quentin L. Cook
9. “When we realize that parents and family members can be more than blood relations and are in very deed friends, then we will have a glimpse of how our Heavenly Father wants us to live, not only as brothers and sisters but as very close friends.” —Marvin J. Ashton
10. “Sometimes it is harder for us to smile at those who live with us, the immediate members of our families, than it is to smile at those who are not so close to us. Let us never forget: love begins at home.” —Mother Teresa
11. “All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.” —Abraham Lincoln
12. “What matters most is what lasts the longest, and our families are for eternity.” —M. Russell Ballard
13. “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” —Michael J. Fox
What’s your favorite quote about families?