Hugh Nibley, 1983 

“All this took place in Central America, the perennial arena of the Big People versus the Little People.”

[Hugh Nibley, BYU Commencement Ceremony, 19 August 1983; cited in Hugh Nibley, “Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 16 no. 4 (Winter 1983), 12-21]

Apostle John Taylor, 1857

Stephens and Catherwood, after examining the ruins that were found at Guatemala, in central America, and gazing upon magnificent ruins, mouldering temples, stately edifices, rich sculpture, elegant statuary, and all the traces of a highly cultivated and civilized people, said − "Here are the works of a great and mighty people that have inhabited these ruins; but now they are no more; history is silent on the subject, and no man can unravel this profound mystery. Nations have planted, and reaped, and built, and lived, and died, that are now no more; and no one can tell anything about them or reveal their history."

Why, there was a young man in Ontario county, New York, to whom the angel of God appeared and gave an account of the whole. These majestic ruins bespeak the existence of a mighty people. The Book of Mormon unfolds their history. O yes; but his was of too humble an origin, like Jesus of Nazareth. It was not some great professor, who had got an education in a European or an American college, but one who professed to have a revelation from God, − and the world don't believe in revelation; but nevertheless it is true, and we know it [Journal of Discourses 5:240-241, John Taylor, September 13, 1857].