While we are professing to be righteous, let us take a course to prove to God, angels, and men that we are in earnest, and will live and produce those things that are needed for our own sustenance, and build up cities and make Zion the joy of the whole earth. It is not a mere theory that we have to do with, but it is the building up of the kingdom of God, and it is for those who have the principles of the kingdom in their hearts to seek to permanently establish the Zion of God upon the earth, whether they will be able to maintain the kingdom or not is the Lord’s business.

– Daniel H. Wells, 9/29/1861