Top 280 Henry Cloud Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.”

— Henry Cloud

102. “The business of church is ultimately people. You’re trying to heal people, grow people, teach people, and mend people. And when leaders spend all of their time helping and growing other people, they ignore their own growth.”

— Henry Cloud

103. “People with a style of denial and blaming are definitely on the list of unsafe people to avoid. 10.”

— Henry Cloud

104. “Being an open system means, basically, that you are not arrogant enough to think that you have all the answers, or that your organization has all the answers, or even that you should. You know that there is experience and energy outside of what you bring that can add to your personal and organizational infrastructure, and you open yourself up to it.”

— Henry Cloud

105. “Problems arise when people act as if their “boulders” are daily loads, and refuse help, or as if their “daily loads” are boulders they shouldn’t have to carry. The results of these two instances are either perpetual pain or irresponsibility.”

— Henry Cloud

106. “Dating should be a part of your life, not your life a part of dating. There is more to life than finding a date.”

— Henry Cloud

107. “Be wary of someone who has never failed, or seem to have no faults... Too good to be true usually is. Perfection hides something.”

— Henry Cloud

108. “A culture is like an immune system. It operates through the laws of systems, just like a body. If a body has an infection, the immune system deals with it. Similarly, a group enforces its norms, either actively or passively.”

— Henry Cloud

109. “The reality is that marriage is only as good as the investment people make in it. God has constructed life so that we are always either going forward into the growth process or backing away from it. We can’t stay the same. And marriage reflects this reality. The connection either deepens, opening both spouses up to the hearts of each, or it starts to deteriorate, closing them off from each other.”

— Henry Cloud

110. “Feelings come from your heart and can tell you the state of your relationships. They can tell you if things are going well, or if there is a problem. If you feel close and loving, things are probably going well. If you feel angry, you have a problem that needs to be addressed. But the point is, your feelings are your responsibility and you must own them and see them as your problem so you can begin to find an answer to whatever issue they are pointing to.”

— Henry Cloud

111. “Our loving heart, like our physical one, needs an inflow as well as an outflow of lifeblood. And like its physical counterpart, our heart is a muscle, a trust muscle. This trust muscle needs to be used and exercised; if it is injured it will slow down or weaken. We need to take responsibility for this loving function of ourselves and use it. Love concealed or love rejected can both kill us.”

— Henry Cloud

112. “There is nothing that you are presently doing that you did not have to learn. At one time the things you are now able to do were unfamiliar and frightening. This is the nature of life. But the important thing to remember is that you can learn. Once you realize that you are able to learn new things and handle new situations, you cease fearing the future.”

— Henry Cloud

113. “Did the dentist hurt you when he drilled your tooth to remove the cavity?” “Yes.” “Did he harm you?” “No, he made me feel better.” “Hurt and harm are different,” I pointed out. “When you ate the sugar that gave you the cavity, did that hurt?” “No, it tasted good,” he said, with a smile that told me he was catching on. “Did it harm you?” “Yes.” “That’s my point. Things can hurt and not harm us. In fact they can even be good for us. And things that feel good can be very harmful to us.”

— Henry Cloud

114. “All good marriages need outside support, so we need to seek out the right and appropriate sources. These should be people who are not only safe, but whose influence on us strengthens the marriage bond. Find people who are “for” your marriage and want to help you grow together. Avoid those who play the game of “poor you, being married to that bad person.”

— Henry Cloud

115. “Make friends with your needs. Welcome them. They are a gift from God, designed to draw you into relationship with him and with his safe people. Your needs are the cure to the sin of self-sufficiency.”

— Henry Cloud

116. “Many people will not be honest because they fear loss of intimacy and togetherness. In reality, honesty brings people closer together, for it will strengthen their identities. The more you realize your separate identities, the closer you can become. Telling loved ones what is really on your mind and telling others what you really think is the foundation of love.”

— Henry Cloud

117. “We are all deceivers to some degree. The difference between safe and unsafe “liars” is that safe people own their lies and see them as a problem to change as they become aware of their deception.”

— Henry Cloud

118. “One of the most powerful, though difficult, lessons we all need to learn on our spiritual pilgrimage is that even when bad things happen and we do not understand why, we can trust God to be present and working on our behalf.”

— Henry Cloud

119. “I read many years ago that Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, was asked, “How is your marriage so successful?” She replied, “Because he plays golf, and I play bridge.” Ruth Bell Graham understood the value of outside sources of life for a marriage to flourish.”

— Henry Cloud

120. “In a healthy relationship, each partner is responsible for his own feelings, attitudes, behaviors, and choices. And each partner holds the other responsible for such things.”

— Henry Cloud

121. “No matter how much you talk to yourself, read, study, or practice, you can’t develop or set boundaries apart from supportive relationships with God and others. Don’t even try to start setting limits until you have entered into deep, abiding attachments with people who will love you no matter what.”

— Henry Cloud

122. “Your business and your life will change when you really, really get it that some people are not going to change, no matter what you do, and that still others have a vested interest in being destructive.”

— Henry Cloud

123. “In a sense, matters of the heart are mostly subjective and unconscious, and that’s not bad. Soul connections should not always be made on a rational basis. What a boring life that would be! The unconscious part of ourselves has a wisdom of its own, and in some ways our heart knows what it wants and needs. That is valid. But God has made us with two sides of our being, the rational and the emotional; when they are in conflict, we are in trouble.”

— Henry Cloud

124. “If you’re attracted to critical people, you may find relief in their clarity of thought and purity of vision. But you’ll also find yourself guilt-ridden, compliant, and unable to make mistakes without tremendous anxiety. Irresponsibles.”

— Henry Cloud

125. “Proactive people show you what they love, what they want, what they purpose, and what they stand for. These people are very different from those who are known by what they hate, what they don’t like, what they stand against, and what they will not do.”

— Henry Cloud

126. “You can’t prune toward anything if you don’t know what you want. You have to figure out what you are trying to be or build and then define what the pruning standards are going to be. That definition and those standards will bring you to the pruning moments, wherein you either own the vision or you don’t.”

— Henry Cloud

127. “This type of boundary problem paralyzes people’s no muscles. Whenever they need to protect themselves by saying no, the word catches in their throats. This happens for a number of different reasons: Fear of hurting the other person’s feelings Fear of abandonment and separateness A wish to be totally dependent on another Fear of someone else’s anger.”

— Henry Cloud

128. “Freedom comes from taking responsibility; bondage comes from giving it away.”

— Henry Cloud

129. “The greatest people are the ones who have not sought greatness, but served greatly the causes, values, and missions that were much bigger than them.”

— Henry Cloud

130. “You know you’re around a safe, adult person by the following characteristics: She is not threatened by your differences. She has standards, values, and convictions she’s worked out for herself. At the same time, she doesn’t have a “right way” and a “wrong way” for everything. She functions at least on the same level of maturity as her same-age peers. She appreciates mystery and the unknown. She encourages me to develop my own values.”

— Henry Cloud

131. “How does our self-sufficiency ruin safety? Primarily by preventing us from experiencing our impoverishment. People who “have it together” are not hungry, or thirsty, for others. They do not feel a lack within when they’re alone or in distress. They do not connect with other people, because they do not experience any need for it.”

— Henry Cloud

132. “The first is setting limits on others. This is the component that we most often hear about when we talk about boundaries. In reality, setting limits on others is a misnomer. We can’t do that. What we can do is set limits on our own exposure to people who are behaving poorly; we can’t change them or make them behave right.”

— Henry Cloud

133. “Even with the desire for a better life, we can be reluctant to do the work of boundaries because it will be a war. The battle falls into two categories: outside resistance we get from others and the resistance we get from ourselves.”

— Henry Cloud

134. “A boundary is a “property line” that defines a person; it defines where one person ends and someone else begins.”

— Henry Cloud

135. “Failing well means ending something that is not working and choosing to do something else better.”

— Henry Cloud

136. “Psychological symptoms are God’s way of letting us know that something is wrong. Depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse, and compulsive behaviors are all symptoms of a deeper problem.”

— Henry Cloud

137. “This is the true selfishness: self-centeredness.”

— Henry Cloud

138. “Do not let an out-of-control person be the cue for you to change your course. Just allow him to be angry and decide for yourself what you need to do.”

— Henry Cloud

139. “An adult who does not stand on his own financially is still a child. To be an adult, you must live within your means and pay for your own failures.”

— Henry Cloud

140. “Appropriate boundaries don’t control, attack or hurt anyone. They simply prevent your treasures from being taken at the wrong time. Saying no to adults, who are responsible for getting their own needs met, may cause some discomfort. But it doesn’t cause injury.”

— Henry Cloud

141. “This also destroys our safety. If your boundaries have been injured, you may find that when you are in conflict with someone, you shut down without even being aware of it. This isolates us from love, and keeps us from taking in safe people.”

— Henry Cloud

142. “In order for any of us to become fully functioning members of society, we must learn an interdependent dance with the community in which we live. We need each other. We need our friends. We need teaching and information from sources other than our parents. When we learn to use the community to meet our needs for relationship and truth, we can then be grounded wherever we find ourselves in life.”

— Henry Cloud

143. “Many people cannot say, “I love you and I do not want to do that.” Such a statement does not make sense to them. They think that to love means to always say yes.”

— Henry Cloud

144. “We were created for intimacy, to connect with someone with heart, soul, and mind. Intimacy occurs when we are open, vulnerable, and honest, for these qualities help us to be close to each other.”

— Henry Cloud

145. “If you are angry, even if someone else has sinned against you, it is your responsibility to do something about it.”

— Henry Cloud

146. “You will be amazed how much can change in your life when you finally begin to let go of what you can never have. All.”

— Henry Cloud

147. “If I can’t allow you to be a person in your own right, then I can’t empathize with you. I’ll always take your experience as meaning something about me. Or I’ll react to your feelings by thinking of myself, not you.”

— Henry Cloud

148. “Confrontation helps us learn about ourselves and change destructive patterns.”

— Henry Cloud

149. “God has built emotions into our personalities for a reason: they are a signal. Much like a barometer measures atmospheric pressure, emotions work as a gauge to tell us the state of our soul.”

— Henry Cloud

150. “Self-control is a big deal in human performance. Getting better depends upon it. You cannot get better if it’s not you who has to get better. You are the performer, period. You are the only thing you can control.”

— Henry Cloud