Top 70 Jim Wallis Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “We can find common ground only by moving to higher ground.”

— Jim Wallis

2. “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change.”

— Jim Wallis

3. “Our calling is not only to pull people out of the river, but to go upstream to find out what or who is pushing them in.”

— Jim Wallis

4. “Healthcare should be a human right and not a commodity for sale.”

— Jim Wallis

5. “Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.”

— Jim Wallis

6. “Faith reminds us that change is always possible.”

— Jim Wallis

7. “If you are asking the wrong question, it doesn’t matter how good the answer is, you aren’t going to get where you want to go.”

— Jim Wallis

8. “The Christian doctrine is one that is both about individual spirituality and a parallel commitment to social justice.”

— Jim Wallis

9. “The kingdom of God, which Jesus came to inaugurate, is meant to create an alternate reality in this world, and ultimately to transform the kingdoms of this world.”

— Jim Wallis

10. “The world will not change until we do.”

— Jim Wallis

11. “The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.”

— Jim Wallis

12. “Our choice is between cynicism and hope.”

— Jim Wallis

13. “Hope unbelieved is always considered nonsense. But hope believed is history in the process of being changed.”

— Jim Wallis

14. “The best response to bad religion is better religion, not secularism.”

— Jim Wallis

15. “Involuntary servitude was banned by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, but nothing was done to confront the ideology of white supremacy. Slavery didn’t end in 1865; it just evolved.”

— Jim Wallis

16. “Spirituality becomes a commodity to be bought and sold. So spirituality has to be disciplined by social justice.”

— Jim Wallis

17. “Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.”

— Jim Wallis

18. “Prejudice may indeed be a universal human sin that all races can exhibit, but racism is more than an inevitable consequence of human nature or social accident. Rather, racism is a system of oppression for social and economic purposes. As many analysts have suggested, racism is prejudice plus power.”

— Jim Wallis

19. “But when we place God on our side of things, that we are now ridding the world of evil – that’s very dangerous, that one nation has this role to rid the world of evil. What about the evil we have committed, that we are complicit in?”

— Jim Wallis

20. “Wealthy Christians talk about the poor but have no friends who are poor. So they merely speculate on the reasons for their condition, often placing the blame on the poor themselves.”

— Jim Wallis

21. “We have got some mountains to move. Three billion people – half of God’s children – are living on less than $2 a day.”

— Jim Wallis

22. “Pastors should preach truth from the pulpit. Teachers and parents should clearly point out when the president is lying and teach children what the truth is. We can all use social media to confront lies with facts. The truth will indeed set us free, but the unwillingness of the faith community to speak truth to power could push us toward political bondage.”

— Jim Wallis

23. “The failure of political leaders to help uplift the poor will be judged a moral failure.”

— Jim Wallis

24. “To dig our heels in and say no to a present madness is a good thing, but to walk a new path and say yes is a better thing.”

— Jim Wallis

25. “How do we nurture both families and communities, promote a civil discourse, and approach problems with solutions and hope instead of fear and blame?”

— Jim Wallis

26. “Two of the greatest hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social change. The connection between the two is the one the world is waiting for, especially the new generation. And the first hunger will empower the second.”

— Jim Wallis

27. “Cynicism really comes out of despair, but the antidote to cynicism is not optimism but action.”

— Jim Wallis

28. “So when the only domestic social policy is tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans, we say, ‘Where is faith being put into action here?’”

— Jim Wallis

29. “But when one believes that you’ve been appointed by God for a particular mission in history, you have to be very careful about that, how you speak about that. Where is the self-reflection in that? Where is the humility in that?”

— Jim Wallis

30. “What is my calling? What am I supposed to do? I think running for office, public office, can be a divine calling. I mean, Ive wrestled with that very question myself.”

— Jim Wallis

31. “You can’t be evangelical and associate yourself with Jesus and what he says about the poor and just have no other domestic concerns than tax cuts for wealthy people.”

— Jim Wallis

32. “The religious Right went wrong by forgetting its religious and moral roots and going for political power; the civil rights movement was proven right in operating out of its spiritual strength and letting its political influence flow from its moral influence.”

— Jim Wallis

33. “And when it comes to the dangers of political autocracy and the rise of authoritarian behavior, people in the faith community must be among the first to raise the challenge. Our “Reclaiming Jesus” declaration concludes its proposition on our commitment to “Christ’s way of leadership” with this commitment: “We believe authoritarian political leadership is a theological danger threatening democracy and the common good – and we will resist it.”

— Jim Wallis

34. “Once you open that door to a values conversation, it’s going to undercut a right-wing economic agenda, which values wealth over work and favors the rich over the poor, or resorts to war as the first resort and not the last.”

— Jim Wallis

35. “It’s hope as a decision that makes change possible.”

— Jim Wallis

36. “A billion dollars every week for Iraq, $87 billion for Iraq. We can’t get $5 billion for childcare over five years in welfare reform.”

— Jim Wallis

37. “Most Americans believe that if you work hard and full-time, you should not be poor. But the truth is that many working families are, and many low-income breadwinners must hold down multiple jobs just to survive.”

— Jim Wallis

38. “Conventional wisdom suggests that the antidote to religious fundamentalism is more secularism. But that is a very big mistake. The best response to bad religion is better religion, not secularism.”

— Jim Wallis

39. “Martin Luther King Jr. really understood the role of the churches when he said, ‘The church is not meant to be the master of the state.’ We don’t sort of take power and grab the levers of government and impose our agenda down people’s throats.”

— Jim Wallis

40. “This year – today – I am repenting of my dependence on fossil fuels.”

— Jim Wallis

41. “Racism is rooted in sin – or evil, as nonreligious people might prefer – which goes deeper than politics, pointing fingers, partisan maneuvers, blaming, or name calling. We can get to a better place only if we go to that morally deeper place. There will be no superficial or merely political overcoming of our racial sins – that will take a spiritual and moral transformation as well. Sin must be named, exposed, and understood before it can be repented of.”

— Jim Wallis

42. “I don’t think we should discriminate against an organization or congregation because they’re religious, if they’re doing good work. But government can’t subsidize proselytizing or worship or religious activity. It can’t.”

— Jim Wallis

43. “The people who have more money and goods than any people in the history of the world spend most of their time worrying about not having enough.”

— Jim Wallis

44. “The white pastors who opposed the civil rights movement, and even those who ignored it, were indeed disobeying Paul’s theological proclamation that, in Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female; but all are one in Christ Jesus.”

— Jim Wallis

45. “Trade is now clearly designed to favor the wealthiest and most powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. The three wealthiest people on earth now control more assets than the combined incomes of 600 million people in the world’s 48 poorest countries.”

— Jim Wallis

46. “If evil in this world is deeply human and very real, and religious people believe it is, it just doesn’t make spiritual sense to suggest that the evil all lies “out there” with our adversaries and enemies, and none of it is “in here” with us – embedded in our own attitudes, behaviors, and policies.”

— Jim Wallis

47. “When religion is manipulated for political gain, faith loses its prophetic stance.”

— Jim Wallis

48. “I think it’s a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing.”

— Jim Wallis

49. “No historic presidential election, no athlete or entertainer’s success, no silent tolerance of one another is enough to create the truth and reconciliation needed to eliminate racial inequality or the presumption of guilt. We’re going to have to collectively acknowledge our failures at dealing with racial bias. People of faith are going to have to raise their voices and take action. Reading this extraordinary new work by Jim Wallis is a very good place to start.”

— Jim Wallis

50. “As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, whose fiftieth anniversary has now passed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”1 King’s dream failed that night in Florida when Zimmerman decided to follow Martin because of the color of his skin.”

— Jim Wallis