Making the Most of Maxims

While many general authorities quote or reference others' proverbs and maxims, President Uchtdorf creates his own. Personally, I have always remembered President Uchtdorf for his short, profound expressions that hold weight in any context. Although I never realized it before, I now understand that these clever and inspirational ideas have always added ethos to his messages.

In the Saturday morning session, for example, he declares, "Sometimes we take the beautiful Lily of God's truth and guild it with layers upon layers of manmade good ideas, programs, and expectations". He mixes imagery and personification to intensify a quite simple idea: simplicity is always better (no pun intended). It's almost ironic how he expresses simplicity through complex and sophisticated means.

President Uchtdorf's classic use of his hands

He later summarizes his motivation for speaking by saying, "Exaltation is our goal. Discipleship is our journey." As we discussed in class, the parallelism contributes to the logos of his claim. We can easily see the differences between exaltation and discipleship, and yet we understand that one leads to the other. Such simplicity makes his claim more memorable and transposes it to a maxim as we are familiar with.

Uchtdorf prepares the audience for each of his "proverbs" through his delivery. His tone changes, he adds pauses throughout, and he uses his hands to emphasize the key words. While sometimes cliche patterns like this can remove credibility from the speaker, I feel like he maintains his originality by varying his tone and the length of his pauses.

My mission journals are filled with inspirational quotes from President Uchtdorf. I always look forward to his talks because I have the expectation that I'll walk away with a profound and original idea for improving my life. He obviously has gained credibility for me through his clever use of maxims and proverbs.