Top 30 Paul Tournier Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.”

— Paul Tournier

Featured in: Confidence Quotes, Attitude Quotes, Sports Quotes

2. “No one can develop freely in this world and find a full life without feeling understood by at least one person.”

— Paul Tournier

3. “Everything that is worthwhile in life is scary. Choosing a school, choosing a career, getting married, having kids – all those things are scary. If it is not fearful, it is not worthwhile.”

— Paul Tournier

4. “Life can become once more a grand adventure if we will surrender it to god. He brings one adventure to an end, only to open another to us. With him we must be ready for anything.”

— Paul Tournier

5. “There are two things we cannot do alone. One is to be married and the other is to be a Christian.”

— Paul Tournier

6. “In order to really understand, we need to listen, not reply. We need to listen long and attentively. In order to help anybody to open his heart we have to give him time, asking only a few questions, as carefully as possible in order to help him better explain his experience.”

— Paul Tournier

7. “The real meaning of travel, like that of a conversation by the fireside, is the discovery of oneself through contact with other people, and its condition is self-commitment in the dialogue.”

— Paul Tournier

8. “The adventurous life is not one exempt from fear, but on the contrary, one that is lived in full knowledge of fears of all kinds, one in which we go forward in spite of our fears.”

— Paul Tournier

9. “The worst thing is not being wrong, but being sure one is not wrong.”

— Paul Tournier

10. “Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.”

— Paul Tournier

11. “That is what marriage really means; helping one another to reach the full status of being persons, responsible and autonomous beings who do not run away from life.”

— Paul Tournier

12. “Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.”

— Paul Tournier

13. “Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either.”

— Paul Tournier

14. “If there had been no fear of failure, neither would there be any joy in success.”

— Paul Tournier

15. “People are reluctant to talk about old age and death because they are afraid of emotion, and they willingly avoid the things they feel most emotional about, though these are the very things they most need to talk about.”

— Paul Tournier

16. “At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance.”

— Paul Tournier

17. “Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as between individuals. They are, for the most part, dialogues of the deaf.”

— Paul Tournier

18. “Your manner of life now is already determining your life in those years of old age and retirement, without your realizing it even, and perhaps without your giving enough thought to it. One must therefore prepare oneself for retirement.”

— Paul Tournier

19. “Our task is to live our personal communion with Christ with such intensity as to make it contagious.”

— Paul Tournier

20. “Most illnesses do not, as is generally thought, come like a bolt out of the blue. The ground is prepared for years through faulty diet, intemperance, overwork, and moral conflicts, slowly eroding the subject’s vitality.”

— Paul Tournier

21. “To be right is dangerous, it has ever been the source of all intolerance.”

— Paul Tournier

22. “We are always looking for a grand program of action full of great ideas, when the thing is to begin by obeying the little ideas.”

— Paul Tournier

23. “The more refined and subtle our minds, the more vulnerable they are.”

— Paul Tournier

24. “Marriage teaches you loyalty, forbearance, self-restraint, meekness, and a great many other things you wouldn’t need if you had stayed single.”

— Paul Tournier

25. “The really important thing in life is not the avoidance of mistakes, but the obedience of faith. By obedience, the man is led step by step to correct his errors, whereas nothing will ever happen to him if he doesn’t get going.”

— Paul Tournier

26. “Let us not seek to bring religion to others, but let us endeavor to live it ourselves.”

— Paul Tournier

27. “The most tragic consequence of our criticism of a man is to block his way to humiliation and grace, precisely to drive him into the mechanisms of self justification and into his faults instead of freeing him from them. For him, our voice drowns the voice of God.”

— Paul Tournier

28. “Many ordinary illnesses are nothing but the expression of a serious dissatisfaction with life.”

— Paul Tournier

29. “Woe to the man who tries to remain objective and to maintain a wide perspective: every one will label him as an enemy.”

— Paul Tournier

30. “Sickness may be the solemn occasion of God’s intervention in a person’s life.”

— Paul Tournier

31. “Recounting of a life story, a mind thinking aloud leads one inevitably to the consideration of problems which are no longer psychological but spiritual.”

— Paul Tournier

32. “A man makes himself hard and inflexible in order to escape his guiltiness. The strange paradox present on every page of the Gospels and which we can verify any day, is that it is not guilt which is the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes. On the contrary, it is the repression of guilt, self-justification, genuine self-righteousness and smugness which is the obstacle.”

— Paul Tournier

33. “We do not posses God. We find him periodically.”

— Paul Tournier