Top 30 Hugh Nibley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Why read the Book of Mormon? Because angels do not come on trivial errands.”

— Hugh Nibley

2. “If you pray for an angel to visit you, you know what he’ll do if he comes. He’ll just quote the scriptures to you – so you know you’re wasting your time waiting for what we already have. I’m quite serious about that.”

— Hugh Nibley

3. “Indolent and unworthy the beggar may be – but that is not your concern: It is better, said Joseph Smith, to feed ten impostors than to run the risk of turning away one honest petition.”

— Hugh Nibley

4. “No matter where we begin, if we pursue knowledge diligently and honestly, our quest will inevitably lead us from the things of the earth to the things of heaven.”

— Hugh Nibley

5. “The Book of Mormon is an inexhaustible encyclopedia of knowledge.”

— Hugh Nibley

6. “Don’t be like anybody else. Be different. Then you can make a contribution. Otherwise, you just echo something; you’re just a reflection.”

— Hugh Nibley

7. “It is throwing your life away to think of the wrong things.”

— Hugh Nibley

8. “Well, I have a testimony, I may be ignorant, but I am not lost.”

— Hugh Nibley

9. “Only if you reach the boundary will the boundary recede before you. And if you don’t, if you confine your efforts, the boundary will shrink to accommodate itself to your efforts. And you can only expand your capacities by working to the very limit.”

— Hugh Nibley

10. “Every way of life produces its own environment and in turn is influenced by that environment.”

— Hugh Nibley

11. “The tragedy of the Book of Mormon is not what became of the Nephites but what the Nephites became.”

— Hugh Nibley

12. “True knowledge never shuts the door on more knowledge, but zeal often does.”

— Hugh Nibley

13. “What on earth have a man’s name, degree, academic position, and of all things, opinions, to do with whether a thing is true?”

— Hugh Nibley

14. “Things that appear unlikely, impossible, or paradoxical from one point of view often make perfectly good sense from another.”

— Hugh Nibley

15. “Work is, after all, not a busy running back and forth in established grooves, though that is the essence of our modern business and academic life, but the supreme energy and disciplined curiosity required to cut new grooves.”

— Hugh Nibley

16. “Nobody loves the rat race, but nobody can think of anything else – Satan has us just where he wants us.”

— Hugh Nibley

17. “And the issue is never the merits of the evidence but always the jealous rivalry of the contestants to see which would be the official light unto the world. Right down to the present day we have been the spectators of a foolish contest between equally vain and bigoted rivals.”

— Hugh Nibley

18. “You can only expand your capacities by working to the very limit.”

— Hugh Nibley

19. “The very helplessness of the public which makes it necessary for them to consult the experts also makes it impossible for them to judge how expert they are.”

— Hugh Nibley

20. “Why do people feel guilty about TV? What is wrong with it? Just this: it shuts out all the wonderful things of which the mind is capable, leaving it drugged in a state of thoughtless stupor.”

— Hugh Nibley

21. “In this crucible of wickedness the true greatness of Mormon shines like a star.”

— Hugh Nibley

22. “All scholarship, like all science, is an ongoing, open-ended discussion in which all conclusions are tentative forever, the principal value and charm of the game being the discovery of the totally unexpected.”

— Hugh Nibley

23. “Being self-taught is no disgrace; but being self-certified is another matter.”

— Hugh Nibley

24. “At UCLA I quickly learned the knack of getting grades, a craven surrender to custom, since grades had little to do with learning.”

— Hugh Nibley

25. “As knowledge increases, the verdict of yesterday must be reversed today, and in the long run the most positive authority is the least to be trusted.”

— Hugh Nibley

26. “Careerism is the determination to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven.”

— Hugh Nibley

27. “Man’s dominion is a call to service, not a license to to exterminate.”

— Hugh Nibley

28. “Self-justification, that was the danger – the exhilerating exercise of explaining why my ways are God’s ways after all.”

— Hugh Nibley

29. “Can the mere convenience that makes money such a useful device continue indefinitely to outweigh the horrendous and growing burden of evil that it imposes on the human race and ultimately brings its dependents to ruin?”

— Hugh Nibley

30. “The unique value of Christianity lies in those things which would never in a million years occur to men if left to themselves.”

— Hugh Nibley

31. “In the business of scholarship, evidence is far more flexible than opinion. The prevailing view of the past is controlled not by evidence but by opinion.”

— Hugh Nibley

32. “The genius of stable societies is that they achieve stability without stagnation, repetition without monotony, conformity with originality, obedience with liberty.”

— Hugh Nibley

33. “Competitiveness always rests on the assumption of a life-and-death struggle.”

— Hugh Nibley

34. “Who can be ‘agents unto themselves’ if they are in bondage to others and have to accept their terms?”

— Hugh Nibley