Henry Cloud Quotes

#1. If you protect your children from the pain of irresponsibility, you set them up for many struggles in adulthood.

Henry Cloud

#2. A good test of a relationship is how a person responds to the word 'no.' Love respects 'no,' control does not.

Henry Cloud

#3. Mature, healthy people need other people; they don't isolate themselves ... Needing love isn't being immature. Rather, it gives us the energy we need to go out and slay our dragons.

Henry Cloud

#4. Being right can never compete with doing well.

Henry Cloud

#5. Parents often yell and nag, instead of allowing their children to reap the natural consequences of their behavior. Parenting with love and limits, with warmth and consequences, produces confident children who have a sense of control over their lives.

Henry Cloud

#6. There's no better way to become a disintegrated character than to be your own authority.

Henry Cloud

#7. Our ability to give and respond to love is our greatest gift. The heart that God has fashioned in his image is the center of our being.

Henry Cloud

#8. You aren't alive if you aren't in need.

Henry Cloud

#9. Many people give out of obligation and compulsion, which leads to resentment.

Henry Cloud

#10. People often think the Devil tries to influence people to do "bad things." While this is true, the demonic strategy is also much deeper. He tries to tempt us to get our needs met without relationship and without humility, the way he wanted to in the beginning.

Henry Cloud

#11. Clarity leads to attention and attention leads to results.

Henry Cloud

#12. Self-control is a big deal in human performance. Getting better depends upon it. You cannot get better if it's not you who has to get better. You are the performer, period. You are the only thing you can control.

Henry Cloud

#13. The Bible tells us clearly what our parameters are and how to protect them, but often our family, or other past relationships, confuses us about our parameters.

Henry Cloud

#14. Unsafe people will never identify with others as fellow sinners and strugglers, because they see themselves as somehow above all of that.

Henry Cloud

#15. Just as homeowners set physical property lines around their land, we need to set mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries for our lives to help us distinguish what is our responsibility and what isn't.

Henry Cloud

#16. Every human being must have boundaries in order to have successful relationships or a successful performance in life.

Henry Cloud

#17. You can't master people, but you can become a master at choosing and dealing with people.

Henry Cloud

#18. Passing thoughts can sometimes indicate unconscious preoccupations that may need to be examined.

Henry Cloud

#19. Don't use all-or-nothing thinking. Take each day as its own day, and don't worry about it if you mess up one day. The most important thing you can do is just get back up on the horse.

Henry Cloud

#20. Be Hard on the issue, Soft on the person.

Henry Cloud

#21. Dating is a place to practice how to relate to other people.

Henry Cloud

#22. 1. Whose problem is this?
2. What can I do to help him experience the problem?
3. What am I doing to keep him from experiencing the problem?

Henry Cloud

#23. Some managers are able to let go of the past better than others. Those that have the greatest difficulty abandoning things are often those unable to face reality.

Henry Cloud

#24. To grow, we need things that we do not have and cannot provide, and we need to have a source of those things who looks favorably upon us and who does things for us for our own good.

Henry Cloud

#25. The point here is that grace can be available to us, but we might not be available to grace.

Henry Cloud

#26. People who forgive can - and should - also be people who confront. What is not confessed can't be forgiven.

Henry Cloud

#27. I'm not an expert in the sociological realities of all the pastors in the world, but I would say that there are some very, very positive things about the state of integrity in church leaders.

Henry Cloud

#28. What appear to be dangerous and even bad periods in some lives can actually bring them closer to the Lord, because these individuals honestly wrestle with God, as did Jacob at Jabbok, rather than fearfully comply.

Henry Cloud

#29. If you're attracted to critical people, you may find relief in their clarity of thought and purity of vision. But you'll also find yourself guilt-ridden, compliant, and unable to make mistakes without tremendous anxiety. Irresponsibles

Henry Cloud

#30. Appropriate boundaries don't control, attack or hurt anyone. They simply prevent your treasures from being taken at the wrong time. Saying no to adults, who are responsible for getting their own needs met, may cause some discomfort. But it doesn't cause injury.

Henry Cloud

#31. You can always create, seek, and find a range of options to determine how you will respond to what happens, and how you will play the cards in your hand.

Henry Cloud

#32. It is easy to say we love others, but difficult to allow them the freedom inherent in love.

Henry Cloud

#33. When we refuse to be kind to someone when it would be right to do it; when we lie to each other; when we lash out in violence, we transgress, disregarding the standards and statutes of God.

Henry Cloud

#34. Never say to a third party something about someone that you do not plan to say to the person himself.

Henry Cloud

#35. Setting boundaries isn't an alternative to loving your child. It is a means of loving her.

Henry Cloud

#36. The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.

Henry Cloud

#37. The power of being in the physical presence of another person delivers real benefits.

Henry Cloud

#38. What happens with a lot of leaders is that their leadership style is like ADD; they are all over the place with different ideas. They could be driving one idea forward but then move on to something else too soon.

Henry Cloud

#39. The human heart will seek to be known, understood, and connected with above all else. If you do not connect, the ones you care about will find someone who will.

Henry Cloud

#40. As a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: What you create and What you allow.

Henry Cloud

#41. The mature person meets the demands of life, while the immature person demands that life meet her demands.

Henry Cloud

#42. It's important to understand that your no is always subject to you. You own your boundaries. They don't own you. If you set limits with someone, and she responds maturely and lovingly, you can renegotiate the boundary. In addition, you can change the boundary if you are in a safer place.

Henry Cloud

#43. Trembling" (Phil. 2:12). Even knowing that "it is God who works in [us]" (Phil. 2:13), we are our own responsibility. This is a very different picture than many of us are used to. Some individuals see their needs

Henry Cloud

#44. Structuring our feelings helps add reality to them. In fact, para-doxically, many of the invalidating things that people do are attempts to structure us. But the time for structuring is after validation. After our feelings have been validated, we can understand them and put them into perspective.

Henry Cloud

#45. finding the other person's heart is more important than getting that person to see that you are right.

Henry Cloud

#46. One of the most important types of decision making is deciding what you are not going to do, what you need to eliminate in order to make room for strategic investments.

Henry Cloud

#47. Envy says, What is inside me is bad. What is outside me is good. I hate anyone who has something I desire.

Henry Cloud

#48. Be wary of someone who has never failed, or seem to have no faults... Too good to be true usually is. Perfection hides something.

Henry Cloud

#49. In a healthy relationship, each partner is responsible for his own feelings, attitudes, behaviors, and choices. And each partner holds the other responsible for such things.

Henry Cloud

#50. Possessions and accomplishments are not the only things we envy. We can envy a person's character and personality, instead of developing the gifts God has given us (Rom. 12:6). Think

Henry Cloud

#51. Freedom comes from taking responsibility; bondage comes from giving it away.

Henry Cloud

#52. If a person's character makeup determines his future, then child rearing is primarily about helping children to develop character that will take them through life safely, securely, productively, and joyfully.

Henry Cloud

#53. Many people do not think very often about what they think about. They just let their thoughts live inside their head, without observing or questioning them.

Henry Cloud

#54. Failing well means ending something that is not working and choosing to do something else better.

Henry Cloud

#55. True intimacy is only build around the freedom to disagree.

Henry Cloud

#56. When people are vulnerable to control, they feel that they are selfish for deciding what to do with their own property. In reality, deciding for ourselves is the only way we can ever have true love, for then we are giving freely.

Henry Cloud

#57. God's plan for us is to be loved enough by him and others, to not feel isolated - even when we're alone.2

Henry Cloud

#58. As a psychologist, I can tell you that there are people who look very good in a group, but they're very different in a one-on-one situation.

Henry Cloud

#59. To rescue people from the natural consequences of their behavior is to render them powerless.

Henry Cloud

#60. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with.

Henry Cloud

#61. The opposite of bad is not good.The opposite of bad is love

Henry Cloud

#62. Wisdom comes from experience, either the experience of others or of oneself. And to let experience do its work, a person has to be open to receiving the lessons that it has to teach.

Henry Cloud

#63. The problem with this approach is that it makes an idol out of the will, something God never intended. Just

Henry Cloud

#64. You will not grow without attempting to do things you are unable to do.

Henry Cloud

#65. Making decisions based on others' approval or on guilt breeds resentment, a product of our sinful nature. We have been so trained by others on what we "should" do that we think we are being loving when we do things out of compulsion.

Henry Cloud

#66. Since the Fall, our instincts have been to withdraw from relationship when we're in trouble, when we most need other people. (Remember

Henry Cloud

#67. There is a difference between solitude and isolation. One is connected and one isn't. Solitude replenishes, isolation diminishes.

Henry Cloud

#68. The business of church is ultimately people. You're trying to heal people, grow people, teach people, and mend people. And when leaders spend all of their time helping and growing other people, they ignore their own growth.

Henry Cloud

#69. We are all deceivers to some degree. The difference between safe and unsafe "liars" is that safe people own their lies and see them as a problem to change as they become aware of their deception.

Henry Cloud

#70. When we succeed in blaming someone for our problems, we still are no closer to a solution for them.

Henry Cloud

#71. Be careful not to give your child the impression that you love her perfect, performing parts more than you do her mediocre, stumbling parts.

Henry Cloud

#72. When a person travels through a few years with an organization, or with a partnership, or any other kind of working association, he leaves a 'wake' behind in these two areas, task and relationship: what did he accomplish and how did he deal with people?

Henry Cloud

#73. If people are really narcissistic or have a need to be seen as more than they really are, or to be admired as having it all together, then they cannot be followed and trusted by others.

Henry Cloud

#74. 2 Thessalonians 3:10, If a man will not work, he shall not eat.

Henry Cloud

#75. Other children communicate with actions, such as tantrums, yelling, name-calling, and running away. The trick is to disallow this form of expression and encourage verbal communication. "I want to know what you are feeling, but I want to hear you tell me instead of show me.

Henry Cloud

#76. your own performance is either improved or diminished by the other people in your scenario.

Henry Cloud

#77. Only we know what we can and want to give, and only we can be responsible for drawing that line. If we do not draw it, we can quickly become resentful.

Henry Cloud

#78. I do believe there are things that we desire that are not in the cards. But more often than not, when people have a desire for a relationship and it's not happening, there are probably issues to be resolved and issues people could work on that would ultimately end in that desire being fulfilled.

Henry Cloud

#79. Experiencing life as a victim instead of living it purposefully with a feeling of self-control.

Henry Cloud

#80. There is no simple theological answer to pain; the answer is a relationship with God in the midst of pain. Those who need things in neat little black-and-white packages cannot tolerate such a faith.

Henry Cloud

#81. We all make mistakes, but the people who thrive from their mistakes are the successful ones.

Henry Cloud

#82. If you want to become healthy, you have to surround yourself with a group of people that are getting healthy, and you have to be connected to a community that is doing what you want to do.

Henry Cloud

#83. We know that God is not mean to people who are afraid; the Scripture is full of examples of his compassion. But he will not enable passivity. The "wicked and lazy" servant was passive. He did not try. God's grace covers failure, but it cannot make up for passivity. We have to do our part.

Henry Cloud

#84. In a very real way, ownership is the essence of leadership. When you are 'ridiculously in charge,' then you own whatever happens in a company, school, et cetera.

Henry Cloud

#85. The extent to which two people in a relationship can bring up and resolve issues is a critical marker of the soundness of a relationship.

Henry Cloud

#86. Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something's time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a great metaphor for endings.

Henry Cloud

#87. Christianity is not about morality. It's about reality.

Henry Cloud

#88. Frustration is a key ingredient to growth. The child who is never frustrated never develops frustration tolerance.

Henry Cloud

#89. When truth presents itself, the wise person sees the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments.

Henry Cloud

#90. This is a perfect picture of what you want to develop in the soul of your child: a desire to do the right things and to avoid the wrong ones because of empathic concern for others and because of a healthy respect for the demands of God's reality.

Henry Cloud

#91. Defensive devaluation is a protective device that makes love bad, trust unimportant and people "no darn good any way". People who have been deeply hurt in their relationships will often devalue love so it doesn't hurt so much. And they often become resigned to never loving again.

Henry Cloud

#92. People with boundary problems usually have distorted attitudes about responsibility. They feel that to hold people responsible for their feelings, choices, and behaviors is mean. However, Proverbs repeatedly says that setting limits and accepting responsibility will save lives (Prov. 13:18, 24).

Henry Cloud

#93. If you are uneasy about a relationship, ask yourself, Does this relationship breed more togetherness or more isolation within me? If you feel alone in the relationship, that's not a good sign. But remem-ber: the first person to look at is yourself.

Henry Cloud

#94. Hope deferred makes the heart sick (Prov. 13:12).

Henry Cloud

#95. A culture is like an immune system. It operates through the laws of systems, just like a body. If a body has an infection, the immune system deals with it. Similarly, a group enforces its norms, either actively or passively.

Henry Cloud

#96. Successful leaders are bigger than any individual outcome; their sense of self-worth doesn't depend on its having to work. Their whole self-image is not at stake. They are separate from the deal.

Henry Cloud

#97. Blame is one of the gravest problems we face, spiritually and emotionally. It keeps us more concerned about being "good" than about being honest.

Henry Cloud

#98. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.

Henry Cloud

#99. The antidote to entitlement is forgiveness in two directions.

Henry Cloud

#100. no excuses, no blame, and no explanations.

Henry Cloud