Inspirational Quotes by Philip Yancey
“The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness. And people write songs with titles like “Amazing Grace” for one reason: grace is the only force in the universe powerful enough to break the chains that enslave generations. Grace alone melts ungrace.”
“By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out.”
“Though wrong does not disappear when I forgive, it loses its grip on me and is taken over by God, who knows what to do. Such a decision involves risk, of course: the risk that God may not deal with the person as I would want.”
“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
“I fight the tentacular grip of ungrace in my own life. Although I may not perpetuate the strictness of my upbringing, I battle daily against pride, judgmentalism, and a feeling that I must somehow earn God’s approval.”
“the Gospels make clear the connection: God forgives my debts as I forgive my debtors. The reverse is also true: Only by living in the stream of God’s grace will I find the strength to respond with grace toward others.”
“My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”
“Legalism may “work” in an institution such as a Bible college or the Marine Corps. In a world of ungrace, structured shame has considerable power. But there is a cost, an incalculable cost: ungrace does not work in a relationship with God. I have come to see legalism in its pursuit of false purity as an elaborate scheme of grace avoidance. You can know the law by heart without knowing the heart of it”
“C. S. Lewis put it, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
“the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt said, the only remedy for the inevitability of history is forgiveness; otherwise, we remain trapped in the “predicament of irreversibility.”
“Lester Maddox, later elected Governor of Georgia, was one of the protesting restaurateurs. After closing his fried chicken outlets, he opened a memorial to the death of freedom, featuring a copy of the Bill of Rights resting in a black-draped coffin. To support himself he sold clubs and ax handles in three different sizes—Daddy, Mama, and Junior—replicas of the clubs used to beat black civil rights demonstrators. I bought one of those ax handles with money earned from my paper route. Lester Maddox sometimes attended my church (his sister was a member), and it was there I learned a twisted theological basis for my racism.”
“Jesus gave us these stories about grace in order to call us to step completely outside our tit-for-tat world of ungrace and enter into God’s realm of infinite grace.”
“if I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved.”
“Lewis Smedes points out, “The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness. . . . When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.”
“Dios hizo añicos la inexorable ley del pecado y la retribución al invadir la tierra, absorbiendo lo peor que nosotros le podíamos”
“The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative.”
“We live in an atmosphere choked with the fumes of ungrace. Grace comes from outside, as a gift and not an achievement.”
“Legalism is a subtle danger because no one thinks of himself as a legalist. My own rules seem necessary; other people’s rules seem excessively strict.”
“God’s grace is not a grandfatherly display of “niceness,” for it cost the exorbitant price of Calvary.”
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.