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Joseph Fielding Smith

Portrait of Joseph Fielding Smith — Portrait: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

AUTHOR PROFILE

Joseph Fielding Smith

Joseph Fielding Smith spent most of his adult life teaching and writing about Latter-day Saint scripture and history. He served as an apostle for nearly sixty years before becoming the Church’s tenth president in 1970. His quotations are best read with attention to the questions and Church circumstances he was addressing.

“When messengers are sent to minister to the inhabitants of this earth, they are not strangers, but from among our kindred, friends, and fellow-beings and fellow-servants. The ancient prophets who died were those who came to visit their fellow creatures upon the earth. They came to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; … such beings … waited upon the Savior and administered to him on the Mount. … Our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful, and worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges, may have a mission given them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, bringing from the divine Presence messages of love, of warning, or reproof and instruction, to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh.”

— Joseph Fielding Smith

Biography at a glance

Church service: Apostle from 1910; President of the Church from 1970 to 1972
Family: Son of Church President Joseph F. Smith and grandson of Hyrum Smith
Work: Church historian, temple leader, and author of books on Church history and doctrine

A lifetime of study and service

Smith worked in the Church Historian’s office as a young man and later served as Church Historian. His long apostolic ministry overlapped with major changes in the Church’s global reach. He wrote extensively, often answering questions about scripture and the Restoration. The Church’s account of his life describes his assignments and publications.

Teaching the restored gospel

As Church president from 1970 to 1972, Smith continued a long pattern of inviting members to study, repent, and share their faith. His addresses drew heavily on the scriptures and on the history he had spent decades studying. The Church’s timeline offers dates and context for his service.

Related LDS Flow reading

LDS presidents at a glance

Explore related people and topics

David O. McKay, his predecessor as Church president
Harold B. Lee, who followed him
Quotes about the Restoration

Sources and further reading

Quotes by Joseph Fielding Smith

43 quotes

“No member of the Church, who refuses to observe this sacred ordinance, can retain the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Ghost. It is as true today as it was in the days of Paul, that many members of the Church are weak and sickly, in spirit and body, and many sleep, because they have failed to show their love for, and obedience to, the Lord Jesus Christ in the keeping of this commandment.”

Seek Ye Earnestly (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1970), 108

— Joseph Fielding Smith

How oft have wise men and women sought to dictate Brother Joseph by saying, “O, if I were Brother Joseph I would do this and that;” but if they were in Brother Joseph’s shoes they would find that men or women could not be compelled into the kingdom of God, but must be dealt with in long-suffering,

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.241

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“No member of this Church can stand approved in the presence of God who has not seriously and carefully read the Book of Mormon.”

Improvement Era, December 1961, pp. 925-26

— Joseph Fielding Smith

When we go home, get the family together. Let us sing a few songs. Let us read a chapter or two in the Bible, or in the Book of Mormon, or in the Doctrine and Covenants. Let us discuss the principles of the gospel which pertain to advancement in the school of divine knowledge, and in this way occupy one day in seven. I think it would be profitable for us to do this.

Gospel Doctrine, pp. 242-243

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“Marriage was ordained of God. It is a righteous principle when in holiness it is received and practiced. If men and women today would enter into this covenant in the spirit of humility, love and faith, as they are commanded to do, walking righteously in the ways of eternal life, there would be no divorce, no broken homes; but a happiness, a joy, beyond expression.”

Eternal Marriage

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“Things upon the earth, so far as they have not been perverted by wickedness, are typical of things in heaven. Heaven was the prototype of this beautiful creation when it came from the hand of the Creator, and was pronounced ‘good.’”

Journal of Discourses 23:175.

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“as damnable a doctrine as was ever taught among the children of men, for little children are not tainted with sin.”

Doctrines of Salvation, Volume Two, ed. Bruce R. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1955), 2:49;

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“The lawful association of the sexes is ordained of God, not only as the sole means of race perpetuation, but for the development of the higher faculties and nobler traits of human nature, which the love-inspired companionship of man and woman alone can insure”

"Unchastity the Dominant Evil of the Age,” Improvement Era, June 1917, 739

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“The spirit of gratitude is always pleasant and satisfying because it carries with it a sense of helpfulness to others; it begets love and friendship, and engenders divine influence. Gratitude is said to be the memory of the heart.”

Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. (1939), 262.

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“Nothing is a greater injury to the children of men than to be under the influence of a false spirit when they think they have the Spirit of God.”

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 205.

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; … those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.”

— Joseph Fielding Smith

After the resurrection from the dead our bodies will be spiritual bodies, but they will be bodies that are tangible, bodies that have been purified, but they will nevertheless be bodies of flesh and bones. They will not be blood bodies. They will no longer be quickened by blood but quickened by the spirit which is eternal, and they shall become immortal and shall never die.

Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 2, p. 285

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“There is too little religious devotion, love and fear of God, in the home; too much worldliness, selfishness, indifference and lack of reverence in the family, or these never would exist so abundantly on the outside. Then, the home is what needs reforming. … Let love, and peace, and the Spirit of the Lord, kindness, charity, sacrifice for others, abound in your families.”

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“Conscience affirms the reality of the Spirit of Christ in man. It affirms, as well, the reality of good and evil, of justice, mercy, honor, courage, faith, love, and virtue, as well as the necessary opposites—hatred, greed, brutality, jealousy (see 2 Ne. 2:11, 16). Such values, though physically intangible, respond to laws with cause-and-effect relationships as certain as any resulting from physical laws (see Gal. 6:7–9). The Spirit of Christ can be likened unto a “guardian angel” for every person.”

Doctrines of Salvation

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“President Joseph F. Smith said that the same person, the same form and likeness, will come forth “Even to the wounds in the flesh. Not that a person will always be marred by scars, wounds, deformities, defects or infirmities removed in their course, in their proper time, according to the merciful providence of God.” . . .“He did not intend to teach that the adult who loses a leg will come forth without that leg until it can be grafted on after the resurrection. Rather, his body will come forth complete in every part. Deformities and the like will be corrected, if not immediately at the time of the uniting of the spirit and body, so soon thereafter that it will make no difference. We may be sure that every man will receive his body in its perfect frame in the resurrection.”

Gospel Doctrine, 4th Ed., p. 30

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“Each ordinance and requirement given to man for the purpose of bringing to pass his salvation and exaltation is a covenant.”

Doctrines of Salvation

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“I feel most assuredly that our Father in heaven is far more interested in a soul—one of his children—than it is possible for an earthly father to be in one of his children. His love for us is greater than can be the love of an earthly parent for his offspring.”

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“Profanity is filthiness. A person is known as much by his language as he is by the company he keeps. … Filthiness in any form is degrading and soul-destroying and should be avoided.”

Doctrines of Salvation

— Joseph Fielding Smith

“Marriage is the preserver of the human race. Without it, the purposes of God would be frustrated; virtue would be destroyed to give place to vice and corruption, and the earth would be void and empty.”

Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. [1939], 272.

— Joseph Fielding Smith