Top 180 Neal A. Maxwell Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “If the nearly one-and-a-half million babies aborted in America each year could, somehow, vote, chameleon candidates would find fresh reason to be concerned about abortion, whereas now they are unconcerned.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

152. “Thus worshiping, serving, studying, praying, each in its own way squeezes selfishness out of us; pushes aside our preoccupations with the things of the world.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

153. “Unproductive worry – like Parkinson’s proverbial law – tends to expand to fill the time available.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

154. “We can’t dwell upon another’s ingratitude without using up our time and talents unprofitably.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

155. “All crosses are easier to carry when we keep moving.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

156. “Our journey is demanding enough that the need for reassurance as well as reminders is constant.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

157. “So much depends, therefore, upon our maintaining gospel perspective in the midst of ordinariness, the pressures of temptation, tribulation, deprivation, and the cares of the world.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

158. “Let the scriptures refresh you.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

159. “Even the good can become careless without the Lord’s being there to chasten.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

160. “Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best – better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

161. “The authority of example and considerations of character, unlike pudding, are not whipped up in an instant.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

162. “We are in bondage to that which overcomes us. See also 2 Peter 2:19.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

163. “We must not fail, individually, for if we fail, we fail twice – for ourselves and for those who could have been helped, if we had done our duty.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

164. “We were never promised precision in this life... With the gift of agency to mankind, life cannot possibly present a perfectly tidy picture. The ambiguities of circumstances are partly, if not largely, the cumulative result of our varied use of our moral agency, but also of the structure of life itself.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

165. “Giving up on God and on oneself constitutes simultaneous surrender to the natural man.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

166. “Our God does not indulge us, but He is merciful toward our weaknesses as He strives to tutor us.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

167. “Each day I see all about me the fruits of commandment-keeping.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

168. “Celestial criteria measures service, not status.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

169. “We could not learn love in the abstract any more than we could learn patience and the other cardinal virtues. Just as we cannot know the “fellowship of his sufferings” without suffering, we also come to know real fellowship with our fellowmen only by serving them.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

170. “Your task is to conquer yourselves, not ships, lands and castles. This battle is the one in which you especially are to ‘come off conqueror.’ It is fought every day. In fact, it is a continuing process which commenced a long, long time ago.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

171. “C. S. Lewis pointed out that some people are angry with God for His not existing, and others for His existing but for failing to do as mortals would have Him do. Instead of such childishness, we are urged to know God and to learn of His attributes.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

172. “I am as I am, And so is a stone; Them that don’t like me, Must leave me alone.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

173. “The Savior knows what it’s like to die of cancer.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

174. “As George MacDonald wisely wrote, “The one principle of hell is, I am my own!” 4 Fierce pride usually protects this wrong perception.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

175. “Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

176. “Mother lode of learning.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

177. “It is so easy to be confrontive without being informative; indignant without being intelligent; impulsive without being insightful.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

178. “Our afflictions brothers and sisters often will not be extinguished, they will be dwarfed and swallowed up in the joy of Christ. That’s how we overcome, most of the time. It’s not their elimination, but the placing of them in that larger context.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

179. “At times God’s best pupils experience the most rigorous and continuous courses. Eventually those who prove to be men of Christ will thereby become distinguished alumni of life’s school of affliction, graduating with honors.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

180. “Eventually, there will not be enough prisons if there are not enough good homes.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

181. “Defectors often cause more difficulty than disinterested disbelievers.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

182. “There is no democracy of facts.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

183. “Those few members who desert the cause are abandoning an oasis to search for water in the desert.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

184. “When we feel so alone, we cannot presume to teach him who, at the apogee of his agony, trod “the winepress alone” anything about feeling forsaken.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

185. “To be cheerful when others are in despair, to keep the faith when others falter, to be true even when we feel forsaken – all of these are deeply desired outcomes during the deliberate, divine tutorials which God gives to us – because He loves us.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

186. “There will be many fine and wonderful men and women of all races and creeds-and of no religious creeds at all-who will lead decent and useful lives.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

187. “A friend of mine who passed through a most severe trial, when I discussed it with him, he said simply, if it’s fair, it isn’t a trial.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

188. “We are vulnerable if we can be taken by a wave of emotion, invaded by an invidious impulse, roughed up by resentment, or engulfed by a surge of selfishness.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

189. “Pray for me to learn quickly what I need to learn.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

190. “I thank the Savior personally; for bearing all which I added to His hemorrhaging at every pore for all humanity in Gethsemane. I thank Him for bearing what I added to the decibels of His piercing soul cry atop Calvary.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

191. “It is left to each of us to balance contentment regarding what God has allotted to us in life with some divine discontent resulting from what we are in comparison to what we have the power to become.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

192. “We are often not only to slow to get on our knees, but to quick to rise from them.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

193. “It is extremely important for you to believe in yourselves not only for what you are now but for what you have the power to become. Trust in the Lord as He leads you along. He has things for you to do that you won’t know about now but that will unfold later. If you stay close to Him, You will have some great adventures. You will live in a time where instead of sometimes being fulfilled, many of them will actually be fulfilled. The Lord will unfold your future bit by bit.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

194. “While weak hope leaves us at the mercy of our moods and events, ‘brightness of hope’ produces illuminated individuals. Their luminosity is seen, and things are also seen by it!”

— Neal A. Maxwell

195. “The “new” in us is bound to notice the “old” that remains.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

196. “It follows, then, that you and I cannot really expect to glide through life, coolly air-conditioned, while naively petitioning: “Lord, give me experience but not grief, a deeper appreciation of happiness but not deeper sorrow, joy in comfort but not in pain, more capacity to overcome but not more opposition; and please do not let me ever feel perplexed while on thine errand. Then let me come quickly and dwell with thee and fully share thy joy.”

— Neal A. Maxwell