Top 80 William P. Young Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.”

— William P. Young

2. “Transformation without work and pain, without suffering, without a sense of loss is just an illusion of true change.”

— William P. Young

3. “If anything matters, then everything matters.”

— William P. Young

4. “Love always leaves a significant mark.”

— William P. Young

5. “Don’t ever discount the wonder of your tears. They can be healing waters and a stream of joy. Sometimes they are the best words the heart can speak.”

— William P. Young

6. “Paradigms power perceptions, perceptions power emotions.”

— William P. Young

7. “Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person’s throat.”

— William P. Young

8. “Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly.”

— William P. Young

9. “The God of Evangelical Christianity is a Monster.”

— William P. Young

10. “Emotions are the colors of the soul.”

— William P. Young

11. “Truth will set you free. And Truth has a name...”

— William P. Young

12. “Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly.”

— William P. Young

13. “You have to take the time to prepare the soil if you want to embrace the seed.”

— William P. Young

14. “All I want from you is to trust me with what little you can, and grow in loving people around you with the same love I share with you. It’s not your job to change them, or to convince them. You are free to love without an agenda.”

— William P. Young

15. “True love never forces.”

— William P. Young

16. “You are free to love without an agenda.”

— William P. Young

17. “The intricacy and the inherent beautiful fragility of the human soul is such that it is uniquely damaged and only God knows how to heal it, and it’s going to take time.”

— William P. Young

18. “Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself- to serve.”

— William P. Young

19. “Image and appearance tell you little. The inside is bigger than the outside when you have the eyes to see.”

— William P. Young

20. “Mackenzie, you cannot produce trust, just as you cannot ‘do’ humility. It either is or is not. Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me.”

— William P. Young

21. “Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside.”

— William P. Young

22. “The soul is healed by being with children. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky.”

— William P. Young

23. “Did I hear God call me an idiot?”

— William P. Young

24. “Sometimes honesty can be incredibly messy.”

— William P. Young

25. “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”

— William P. Young

26. “If a rainbow makes a sound, or a flower as it grows, that was the sound of her laughter.”

— William P. Young

27. “But, enough of that for now. Let’s get lost again in the starry night.”

— William P. Young

28. “Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive.”

— William P. Young

29. “The ‘will to power and independence’ has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.”

— William P. Young

30. “Jesus was always challenging the dogma of religion. So, you know, it’s not like I’m out there by myself.”

— William P. Young

31. “I don’t want my kids growing up with the image of God that I had – Plato’s white grandfatherly god – because that god is not a very good father. When it comes down to it, you can’t trust him with your kids.”

— William P. Young

32. “My dad was a preacher. My relationship, for example, with my father – very difficult, and very painful, and it took me 50 years to wipe the face of my father off the face of God.”

— William P. Young

33. “It is not the nature of love to force a relationship, but it is the nature of love to open the way.”

— William P. Young

34. “Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.”

— William P. Young

35. “Why do children love to hide and seek? Ask any person who has a passion to explore and discover and create. The choice to hide so many wonders from you is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life.”

— William P. Young

36. “Each relationship between two persons is absolutely unique. That is why you cannot love two people the same. It simply is not possible. You love each person differently because of who they are and the uniqueness that they draw out of you.”

— William P. Young

37. “I am especially fond of you.”

— William P. Young

38. “You don’t play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship.”

— William P. Young

39. “This life is only the anteroom of a greater reality to come.”

— William P. Young

40. “Anger is the right response to something that is so wrong. But don’t let the anger and pain and loss you feel prevent you from forgiving him and removing your hands from around his neck.”

— William P. Young

41. “It is so easy to get sucked into the if-only game, and playing it is a short and slippery slide into despair.”

— William P. Young

42. “I really do believe that God is love, one of deep affection and grace and forgiveness and inspiration.”

— William P. Young

43. “And when you learn, over the course of your life, that it’s not about pleasing God, it’s about learning how to trust God. That’s a huge watershed, because trust is a whole different ballgame than appeasement or pleasing.”

— William P. Young

44. “Jesus is not the ’founder of Christianity.”

— William P. Young

45. “Love is not the limitation; love is the flying.”

— William P. Young

46. “I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.”

— William P. Young

47. “There is always risk in relationships, but bottom line? The world has no meaning apart from relationships. Some are just messier than others, some are seasonal, others are difficult, and a few are easy, but every one of them is important.”

— William P. Young

48. “I have moments that aren’t too bad, but there’s always something I’m struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.”

— William P. Young

49. “Perhaps there is supranatural: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.”

— William P. Young

50. “You cannot heal yourself. You cannot heal anybody else. We’re designed to do this in community because we were created inside community for community by community.”

— William P. Young