Top 300 Philip Yancey Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”

— Philip Yancey

2. “Grace is a free gift of God, but to receive a gift you must have open hands.”

— Philip Yancey

3. “Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God’s point of view.”

— Philip Yancey

4. “Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.”

— Philip Yancey

5. “We deserve punishment and get forgiveness; we deserve God’s wrath and get God’s love.”

— Philip Yancey

6. “Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.”

— Philip Yancey

7. “God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.”

— Philip Yancey

8. “Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.”

— Philip Yancey

9. “C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.”

— Philip Yancey

10. “I go to church as an expression of my need for God and for God’s family.”

— Philip Yancey

11. “Homeless people bear God’s image too.”

— Philip Yancey

12. “Prayer is – keeping company with God.”

— Philip Yancey

13. “There is an “offense” to the Gospel no matter how graciously we present it. It includes the message that God, not humanity, is the ultimate judge of right and wrong, and that the choices we make here have eternal consequences.”

— Philip Yancey

14. “Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.”

— Philip Yancey

15. “I have come to know a God who has a soft spot for rebels, who recruits people like the adulterer David, the whiner Jeremiah, the traitor Peter, and the human-rights abuser Saul of Tarsus. I have come to know a God whose Son made prodigals the heroes of his stories and the trophies of his ministry.”

— Philip Yancey

16. “The surgery of life hurts. It helps me, though, to know that the surgeon himself, the Wounded Surgeon, has felt every stab of pain and every sorrow.”

— Philip Yancey

17. “Doubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?”

— Philip Yancey

18. “When the world asks if there is any hope, we can say absolutely! No one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment- God himself was not exempt. Jesus offered no immunity, no way out of the unfairness, but rather a way through it to the other side.”

— Philip Yancey

19. “I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.”

— Philip Yancey

20. “Imperfection is the prerequisite for grace. Light only gets in through the cracks.”

— Philip Yancey

21. “One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as “those evil people” or “those poor people who need our help.” Nor must we search for signs of “loveworthiness.” Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are.”

— Philip Yancey

22. “In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.”

— Philip Yancey

23. “Grace is heartfelt, tinged with love, a spillover gift of the God who extended undeserved favor toward us.”

— Philip Yancey

24. “The giants of the faith all had one thing in common: neither victory nor success, but passion.”

— Philip Yancey

25. “O God, make the bad people good, and the good people nice.”

— Philip Yancey

26. “Jesus announced a great reversal of values in His Sermon on the Mount, elevating not the rich or attractive, but rather the poor, the persecuted, and those who mourn.”

— Philip Yancey

27. “We tend to think, ‘Life should be fair because God is fair.’ But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.”

— Philip Yancey

28. “Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more... And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less... Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.”

— Philip Yancey

29. “Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization – Hey, let’s elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism – Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.”

— Philip Yancey

30. “What you and I think about Jesus and how we respond to Him will determine our destiny for all eternity.”

— Philip Yancey

31. “Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”

— Philip Yancey

32. “Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace.”

— Philip Yancey

33. “A God wise enough to create me and the world I live in is wise enough to watch out for me.”

— Philip Yancey

34. “I do not get to know God and then do His will. I get to know Him by doing His will.”

— Philip Yancey

35. “The church is, above all, a place to receive grace: it brings forgiven people together with the aim of equipping us to dispense grace to others.”

— Philip Yancey

36. “Our confused society badly needs a community of contrast, a counterculture of ordinary pilgrims who insist living a different way. Unlike popular culture, we will lavish attention on the least “deserving” in direct opposition to our celebrity culture’s emphasis on success, wealth, and beauty.”

— Philip Yancey

37. “God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.”

— Philip Yancey

38. “Prayer unfolds in the stillness of the soul.”

— Philip Yancey

39. “At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.”

— Philip Yancey

40. “No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument.”

— Philip Yancey

41. “Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near.”

— Philip Yancey

42. “Who would complain if God allowed one hour of suffering in an entire lifetime of comfort? Why complain about a lifetime that includes suffering when that lifetime is a mere hour of eternity?”

— Philip Yancey

43. “For me, prayer is not so much me setting out a shopping list of requests for God to consider as it is a way of keeping company with God.”

— Philip Yancey

44. “I doubt God keeps track of how many arguments we win; God may indeed keep track of how well we love.”

— Philip Yancey

45. “One Harlem preacher likens us to the pink plastic spoons at Baskin Robbins: we give the world a foretaste of what lies ahead, the vision of the Biblical prophets. In a world gone astray we should be activity demonstrating here and now God’s will for the planet.”

— Philip Yancey

46. “Jesus was a master of grace: he attracted sinners and moral outcasts even as he offended the religious and responsible people of his day.”

— Philip Yancey

47. “We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey than about the ultimate destination.”

— Philip Yancey

48. “It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you’ve heard everything before and that you have nothing left to learn.”

— Philip Yancey

49. “When a doctoral student at Princeton asked, “What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?” Albert Einstein replied, “Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer.”

— Philip Yancey

50. “Be careful,” warned Nietzsche, “lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon.”

— Philip Yancey