Inspirational Quotes by Philip Yancey
“Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave when we gather together and much about how we can affect the world around us.”
“• You don’t listen to me. • You judge me. • Your faith confuses me. • You talk about what’s wrong instead of making it right. Reviewing these complaints, it occurs to me that Christians fail to communicate to others because we ignore basic principles in relationship. When we make condescending judgments, or proclaim lofty words that don’t translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love — and thus deter a thirsty world from Living Water. The good news about God’s grace goes unheard.”
“We have not, it seems, the power to abstain from worship. Instead, we swallow the sweet poison, substituting lesser gods for God.”
“Evil’s greatest triumph may be its success in portraying religion as an enemy of pleasure when, in fact, religion accounts for its source: every good and enjoyable thing is the invention of a Creator who lavished gifts on the world.”
“Along with Chesterton, I’ve had to take my place among those who acknowledge that we are what is wrong with the world. What is my snobbishness toward my childhood church, for instance, but an inverted form of the harsh judgment it showed me?”
“the New Testament holds up the model of a church whose activities exist primarily for the sake of outsiders. What keeps us from becoming the church God had in mind?”
“culture? As Lesslie Newbigin poses the question, “Can one who goes the way of the Cross sit in the seat of Pilate when it falls vacant?”
“He learned, like every good novelist, that human behaviour can neither be explained nor predicted, only rendered.”
― Philip Yancey ,
from Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church
topics: human-behaviour
“La fe consiste en creer por anticipado algo que solo tendrá sentido cuando se mire hacia el pasado.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“The atheistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was once asked what made him so negative toward Christians. He replied, “I would believe in their salvation if they looked a little more like people who have been saved.”
“I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said 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. Those”
“My slowness to act is a sign of mercy, not of weakness.”
“Democracy requires us to recognize others’ rights even when we fundamentally disagree with them. It requires a civility in which I respect a person’s ultimate worth and seek to persuade but not to coerce. For this reason modern democracy grew out of Christian soil.”
“God is the ultimate judge of hypocrisy in the church, I decided; I would leave such judgment in God’s capable hands. I began to relax and grow softer, more forgiving of others. After all, who has a perfect spouse, or perfect parents or children? We do not give up on the institution of family because of its imperfections—why give up on the church?”
“«Nosotros, sin Dios, no podemos. Dios, sin nosotros, no quiere», decía San Agustín.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“God dispenses gifts, not wages. None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God’s requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell.”
“Even in “post-Christian” societies the gospel will continue to do its subversive work. Jesus used small things to describe his kingdom: a sprinkling of yeast that causes the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt that preserves a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden that grows into a great bush in which the birds of the air come to nest. Practices that used to be common—human sacrifice, slavery, duels to the death, child labor, exploitation of women, racial apartheid, debtors’ prisons, the killing of the elderly and incurably ill—have been banned, in large part because of a gospel stream running through cultures influenced by the Christian faith. Once salted and yeasted, society is difficult to un-salt and un-yeast.”
“We should leave a worship service asking ourselves not “What did I get out of it?” but rather “Was God pleased with what happened?”
“El poder consigue todo, menos lo más importante: no puede controlar el amor.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“Earth is crammed with heaven And every bush aflame with God But only those who see take off their shoes. —ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING”
Group of Brands
© 2026 Bibleportal.com All rights reserved.
Philip Yancey is an American Christian author. Fourteen million of his books have been sold worldwide, making him one of the best-selling evangelical Christian authors. Two of his books have won the ECPA's Christian Book of the Year Award: The Jesus I Never Knew in 1996, What's So Amazing About Grace in 1998. He is published by Zondervan Publishing.
Yancey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. When Yancey was one year old, his father, stricken with polio, died after his church elders suggested he go off life support in faith that God would heal him. This was one of the reasons he had lost his faith at one point of time. Yancey earned his MA with highest honors from the graduate school of Wheaton College. His two graduate degrees in Communications and English were earned from Wheaton College Graduate School and the University of Chicago.
Yancey moved to Chicago, Illinois, and in 1971 joined the staff of Campus Life magazine--a sister publication of Christianity Today directed towards high school and college students--where he served as editor for eight years. Yancey was for many years an editor for Christianity Today and wrote articles for Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Publishers Weekly, Chicago Tribune Magazine, Eternity, Moody Monthly, and National Wildlife, among others. He now lives in Colorado, working as a columnist and editor-at-large for Christianity Today. He is a member of the editorial board of Books and Culture, another magazine affiliated with Christianity Today, and travels around the world for speaking engagements.