Skip to Content

71 Powerful Bishop T.D. Jakes Quotes: Wisdom from America’s Favorite Pastor

Looking for some powerful T.D. Jakes quotes?

Thomas Dexter Jakes Sr., known as T. D. Jakes, is an American bishop, author and filmmaker. He is the bishop of The Potter’s House, a non-denominational American megachurch in Dallas, TX.

Bishop Jakes has been changing lives for decades with his words of wisdom that transcend beyond the church walls.

One of his main missions is about helping and encouraging people to think differently and progressively in order to create a more meaningful life experience; to find your destiny.

We hope you enjoy and take away some powerful words of wisdom from Bishop Jake’s quotes.

Most Inspiring Bishop T.D. Jakes Quotes

1. “Too many people want the appearance of winning rather than the practice and hard work that create a true champion.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

2. “If you can’t figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For your passion will lead you right into your purpose.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

3. “I don’t care how old you are, what you’ve been through or how many battles you feel like you’ve lost: it’s never too late to win the war.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

4. “Never make a permanent decision based on a temporary storm. No matter how raging the billows are today, remind yourself: This too shall pass!” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

5. “Each day is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift to him.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

6. “You face your greatest opposition when you’re closest to your biggest miracle.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

7. “If you can dream it, you can achieve it. The secret to recapturing our dreams is to enjoy the pursuit of the dream, rather than to focus on the outcome.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

8. “When people walk way from you, let them go. Your destiny is never tied to anyone who leaves you, and it doesn’t mean they are bad people. It just means that their part in your story is over.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

9. “God is trying to change your mountain. He is using your mountain to change you.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

10. “When the goal in front of you becomes more powerful than the obstacle behind you, you will always win.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

11. “You can’t be who you’re going to be and who you used to be at the same time.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

12. “Real value isn’t in what you own, drive, wear, or live. The greater value is found in love and life, health and strength, friends and family!” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

13. “If you succeed at loving imperfect people, then it becomes plausible that somebody could love imperfect you.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

Discover unique products that inspire at the
InspiredLife ShopWear Your Motivation. Inspire Your Space.


14. “Face the giants in your life, slay them, and move on. Do not be daunted by the mistakes and failures in your life.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

15. “Stop hiding your scars and your wounds. They’re your trophies that you went through and still survived.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

16. “Whatever God has anointed you to do – do it! Don’t let what people think stop you!” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

Bishop T.D. Jakes Quotes On Purpose and Success

17. “Share your dreams with people who want you to succeed.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

18. “We all set out to make a difference in the world, but the first step is to achieve the less lofty goal of changing your own world.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

19. “Destiny is not for comfort seekers. Destiny is for the daring and determined who are willing to endure some discomfort, delay gratification, and go where destiny leads.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

20. “If you have achieved any level of success, then pour it into someone else. Success is not success without a successor.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

motivational td jakes quotes

21. “Think about it this way: if you are too predictable in any area of your life, you may be paving the way to your own extinction!”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

22. “Sometimes God tells you to put something down in order so that you can pick up something better.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

23. “Excellence requires discomfort.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

24. “Don’t allow your past or present condition to control you. It’s just a process that you’re going through to get you to the next level.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

25. “Be strong enough to stand up again, even after haters make you drop to your knees.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

26. “I wasn’t trying to be rich or famous; I was trying to figure out what is this thing in me that won’t let me sleep that makes me restless and makes me keep pushing. I was trying to discover who I was.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

27. “There is no success like the success of a man who had to persevere in order to receive it. People appreciate the victory when they have to walk it out.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

28. “God will give you anything as long as you understand that he is the primary and not the secondary.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

Discover unique products that inspire at the
InspiredLife ShopWear Your Motivation. Inspire Your Space.


29. “Others can inspire you, but ultimately the only thing that empowers you is what lies within you and learning how to better utilize what you’ve been given.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

30. “If you can accomplish your dream on your own, your dream is too small.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

31. “The most wonderful think in the world is somebody who knows who they are….and knows what they were created to do.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

td jakes quotes on life

32. “Don’t let what people think stop you.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

33. “We are the people that we have been waiting for and no one else is coming.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

34. “You can teach what you know, but you can only reproduce what you are.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

35. “God’s not going to promote you because you have a dream. He’s going to promote you because you’ve maximized where you are so now you’re ready to go to the next level.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

36. “A setback is a setup for a comeback!”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

37. “Big ideas come from forward thinking people who challenge the norm, think outside the box, and invent the world they see inside rather than submitting to the limitations of current dilemmas.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

38. “A lot of people can’t deal with life because they lack the patience to become who they want to be…Everything happens by process. If you don’t go through the process to get it, you don’t have the power to keep it.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

39. “Eagles fly where lesser birds cannot fly, so eagles can do what lesser birds cannot do.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

td jakes quotes on success

40. “If you’re that frustrated with your life and refuse to change, you will always be where you’ve always been.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

Bishop T.D. Jakes Quotes About Destiny

41. “When you hold on to your history, you do so at the expense of your destiny.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

42. “Could it be that we allow the conditions in our lives to distract us from the meaning of our lives?”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

43. “Show Destiny that you’re worth getting close to. Show Destiny that you won’t mess up the opportunity to travel in the same circles with her.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

44. “There may come a time when you can’t save the relationship, but you must save yourself.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

45. “When you leave the familiar and enter the unknown, your fear becomes refined by experience and hammered into tools of survival on the anvil of anxiety.”  – Bishop T.D. Jakes

46. “You face your greatest opposition when your closest to your biggest miracle.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

47. “Friends, loved ones and even enemies influence us, but that doesn’t mean their comments are relevant to your destiny.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

48. “May the passion to be all that God wants you to be sweep across your soul like a gentle breeze.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

49. “It’s not so much where you’re going, it’s what you’re willing to let go of to get there.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

50. “Once you have confidence in your instincts, you must never allow other people’s refusal to believe, or their data to refute, what you instinctively know is true.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

51. “Nobody likes hard times, but it’s the unpleasant experiences that are often the catalysts to build the character required for our destiny.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

52. “You cannot pass through the door of destiny without passing through the hall of haters.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

53. “To waste your time is to waste your life. Don’t spend your life in dry places. Go where you can thrive!” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

54. “God knows what’s best for you. He knows where you are going and he has a plan to get you there.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

55. “Your words will tell others what you think. Your actions will tell them what you believe.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

56. “No matter how much talent you have in your mind and spirit, if your body is not able to function, you are not able to fulfill your destiny.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

Motivational Bishop T.D. Jakes Quotes On Life

57. “Come hell or high water you will never take me back to the place I was before. I have been through too much to let life whoop me again. My faith is stronger than its ever been. My mind is more tenacious that it’s ever been. My soul is more absolute.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

58. “Stop watering things that were never meant to grow in your life. Water what works, what’s good, what’s right. Stop playing around with those dead bones and stuff you can’t fix. It’s over….Leave it alone! You’re coming into a season of GREATNESS. If you water what’s alive and divine, you will see harvest like you’ve never seen before. Stop wasting water on dead issues, dead relationships, dead people, a dead past. No matter how much you water concrete, you can’t grow a garden.”

59. “You cannot rebuke a devil the you continuously grant access to your life.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

60. “The right thing at the wrong time will lead to failure.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

61. “The enemy doesn’t care how many days you live as long as you don’t live in the days you have.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

62. “Never settle for less than God’s best for your life.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

63. “When you get tired you run from little things you could have destroyed.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

64. “Life’s a university that will teach you lessons, regardless of your desire to pass the “class” or not. There is always something else to learn.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

65. “God has invested entirely too much in you for you to be comfortable in anything less than you were created to be.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

66. “Things get rough in a shift. Things become difficult in a shift. People forsake you in a shift. A shift puts you in an unfamiliar and uncertain realm. A paradigm shift affects every other things around.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

67. “Until you live every moment without assuming there will be another moment, then you’re not really living on purpose.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

68. “You may not walk on water; but you can move forward through a storm! You can’t delay the journey just because you want sunshine!” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

69. “If you have the capacity to be more than one thing, do everything that’s inside of you.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

70. “Instincts under pressure crush the carbon of conformity and create diamonds. Each new season of life offers to train us for the next season if we pay attention and adapt.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

71. “Thinking is the first step to a revolution in your life that is incredibly significant.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

Which quotes were your favorite? 

If you were looking for wisdom, inspiration and motivation to get through life’s challenges then we hope today’s post gave you some value.

Whether you’re looking for help in finding success or overcoming adversity, Bishop Jakes has some words of wisdom for that.

Remember that no matter what happens throughout your day, every single person gets up tomorrow morning and starts over again.

Let us know which quotes resonated most with you in the comments.

Discover unique products that inspire at the
InspiredLife ShopWear Your Motivation. Inspire Your Space.