Top 380 Donald Miller Quotes (2023 Update)
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201. “I think that’s why so many couples fight, because they want their partners to validate them and affirm them, and if they don’t get that, they feel as though they’re going to die. And so they lash out. But it’s a terrible thing to wake up and realize the person you just finished crucifying wasn’t Jesus.”

— Donald Miller

202. “We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people... That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.”

— Donald Miller

203. “It’s true: if we live behind a mask we can impress but we can’t connect.”

— Donald Miller

204. “When two people are entirely and completely separate they are finally compatible to be one. Nobody’s self-worth lives inside of another person. Intimacy means we are independently together.”

— Donald Miller

205. “A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it is the basic structure of a good story.”

— Donald Miller

206. “There’s a lot of letters, and a lot of people come say “hi” at book signings, but I’m amazed at how normal everybody is.”

— Donald Miller

207. “What do markets do? They consolidate, they breakout, they extend, they overextend, they back and fill, they consolidate, and repeat the process. That’s all you need to know about the markets.”

— Donald Miller

208. “Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me.”

— Donald Miller

209. “The people I used to be surrounded by are getting along without me. Somehow, that really bugs me.”

— Donald Miller

210. “It blew my mind that what I was thinking was actually applicable to people’s lives, and it certainly revolutionized family.”

— Donald Miller

211. “I’m perfectly willing to be perfectly human.”

— Donald Miller

212. “Meaningful stories have lots and lots of conflict. If we avoid conflict, our stories won’t be meaningful.”

— Donald Miller

213. “I think it is easier to do bad things than to do good things. And there is something in that basic fact, some little clue to the meaning of the universe.”

— Donald Miller

214. “Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as ‘Father’ at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake.”

— Donald Miller

215. “I want to be with people who are humble and hungry, have healthy relationships, and are working to create new and better realities in the world.”

— Donald Miller

216. “Jesus had no regard for the lifeboat politics you and I live within every day.”

— Donald Miller

217. “To know there is a better story for your life and to choose something other is like choosing to die.”

— Donald Miller

218. “Create reciprocity. I’ve never worried about giving away too much free information. In fact, the more generous a brand is, the more reciprocity they create. All relationships are give-and-take, and the more you give to your customers, the more likely they will be to give something back in the future. Give freely.”

— Donald Miller

219. “It’s true the manipulator is the loneliest person in the world. And the second loneliest is the person being manipulated. Unless we’re honest with each other, we can’t connect. We can’t be intimate. Only God can penetrate a manipulative person’s heart, and even then, he sits quietly, waiting for them to stop running their con.”

— Donald Miller

220. “Life no longer felt meaningless. It felt stressful and terrifying, but it definitely didn’t feel meaningless.”

— Donald Miller

221. “It’s a beautiful moment when somebody wakes up to this reality, when they realize God created them so other people could enjoy them, not just endure them.”

— Donald Miller

222. “Author Toni Morrison swats aside other possible sources of her success and says that the ONLY reason she is a great writer is because when she walked into a room as a child her father’s face lit up.”

— Donald Miller

223. “Great writers know what to cut out. It’s the same in life. Clear ambitions. Clear relationships. This is the stuff of good story.”

— Donald Miller

224. “The most attractive characteristic in a person is the story they are telling the world. We stop and stare at stories.”

— Donald Miller

225. “You can’t memorize poetry and stay a fake. Sooner or later, you start to understand what these poets are saying, and it makes you feel life has something quite special, with certain layers of meaning to it.”

— Donald Miller

226. “I lay there under the stars and thought of what a great responsibility it is to be human.”

— Donald Miller

227. “All my books have been titled based on a piece of the prose from inside the book.”

— Donald Miller

228. “My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don’t really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and there are some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care.”

— Donald Miller

229. “If you buy the website, maybe you’ll do something with it. But so far I haven’t; we’ll see.”

— Donald Miller

230. “It’s all connected with the belief human love is conditional. But human love isn’t conditional. No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it’s just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love.”

— Donald Miller

231. “There’s no authoritarian structure at Reed College, but the education is conservative. So what you have is a lot of students who are very authentically looking for truth.”

— Donald Miller

232. “The most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus.”

— Donald Miller

233. “We don’t think of our flaws as the glue that binds us to the people we love, but they are. Grace only sticks to our imperfections. Those who can’t accept their imperfections can’t accept grace either.”

— Donald Miller

234. “You’re assuming that love is a feeling. It isn’t. It can involve feelings, but often it doesn’t. Love acts out of faith, which rarely involves feelings. Love is action; it’s deciding something is true and living out of that belief.”

— Donald Miller

235. “Imagine your customer is a hitchhiker. You pull over to give him a ride, and the one burning question on his mind is simply Where are you going? But as he approaches, you roll down the window and start talking about your mission statement, or how your grandfather built this car with his bare hands, or how your road-trip playlist is all 1980s alternative. This person doesn’t care.”

— Donald Miller

236. “I used to write when I was in the mood or felt inspired. Anymore, I write whether I feel inspired or not. It’s a discipline. So that’s definitely different. It’s part of maturing as a person and as a professional.”

— Donald Miller

237. “The reality is this, though: a healthy person coupled with an unhealthy person will still result in an unhealthy relationship.”

— Donald Miller

238. “When a relationship is right, it is no more possible to wake up and want out of the marriage than it is to wake up and stop believing in God. What is, is what is.”

— Donald Miller

239. “It made me wonder if the reasons our lives seem so muddled is because we keep walking into scenes in which we, along with the people around us, have no clear idea what we want.”

— Donald Miller

240. “People trust those who understand them, and they trust brands that understand them too.”

— Donald Miller

241. “It costs personal fear to be authentic but the reward is integrity, and by that I mean a soul fully integrated, no difference between his act and his actual person.”

— Donald Miller

242. “When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn’t normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface. Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.”

— Donald Miller

243. “In my opinion the misappropriation of the longing for God has caused a lot of people a great deal of pain. In fact, I wondered if some of my early mistakes in relationships weren’t partly because I sought to find resolution for the longing through a woman, a burden no romantic partner should have to bear. How many relationships have been ruined by two people attempting to squeeze the Jesus out of each other?”

— Donald Miller

244. “It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can’t explain, bad and terrible things.”

— Donald Miller

245. “For so much of my life I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole, but it isn’t a religious system, it is people following Christ; and the important thing to do, the right thing to do, was to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.”

— Donald Miller

246. “It is worthy of note that the Chinese and Japanese characters for money and gold are the same.”

— Donald Miller

247. “We both have our independence and freedom, but we have those things with each other. It’s a paradox, but it works. It all reminded me of what my friend Henry Cloud told me, that when two people are entirely and completely separate they are finally compatible to be one. Nobody’s self-worth lives inside of another person. Intimacy means we are independently together.”

— Donald Miller

248. “This means that when we ramble on and on about how we have the biggest manufacturing plant on the West Coast, our customers don’t care. Why? Because that information isn’t helping them eat, drink, find a mate, fall in love, build a tribe, experience a deeper sense of meaning, or stockpile weapons in case barbarians start coming over the hill behind our cul-de-sac. So what do customers do when we blast a bunch of noise.”

— Donald Miller

249. “I believed if word got out about grace, the whole church was going to turn into a brothel.”

— Donald Miller

250. “Never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives. Tell them.”

— Donald Miller