"Give me five minutes with a person's checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is"
About this Quote
The intent is pastoral and corrective. Graham is prodding listeners who can talk fluently about faith while keeping their spending sealed off from scrutiny. He's also disciplining a culture that treats belief as an interior mood rather than a set of commitments with visible costs. In this framing, giving isn't charity as PR; it's discipleship as budgeting. The line quietly shifts "heart" from a romantic metaphor into something measurable: attention, loyalty, fear, and hope, traced through recurring payments.
The subtext is sharper than it first appears. Graham isn't only arguing that generosity is good. He's implying that modern life manufactures false pieties: you can sing hymns on Sunday and still tithe your real devotion to status, comfort, or anxiety the other six days of the week. The checkbook is where those competing religions show up: the mortgage as security liturgy, the luxury purchase as aspiration, the donation as solidarity, the impulse buy as numbness.
Context matters. Graham preached in a booming postwar America where consumerism was becoming a national sacrament and televised religion risked becoming performance. This aphorism is his antidote to performative faith: if you want to know what someone worships, follow the money.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Rose Book of Bible Charts (Rose Publishing (Torrance, Calif.), 2014) modern compilationISBN: 9781596368699 · ID: lsSVEAAAQBAJ
Evidence:
... Billy Graham said , " Give me five minutes with a person's checkbook , and I will tell you where their heart is . " If you want your heart to be set on the things of God , get into the habit of placing your money into things God cares ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Graham, Billy. (2026, February 9). Give me five minutes with a person's checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/give-me-five-minutes-with-a-persons-checkbook-and-30194/
Chicago Style
Graham, Billy. "Give me five minutes with a person's checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is." FixQuotes. February 9, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/give-me-five-minutes-with-a-persons-checkbook-and-30194/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Give me five minutes with a person's checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is." FixQuotes, 9 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/give-me-five-minutes-with-a-persons-checkbook-and-30194/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










