Top 70 David Richo Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “What we are not changing, we are choosing.”

— David Richo

2. “Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.”

— David Richo

3. “To be adult in relationship is not to be conflict-free, it’s to resolve conflicts mindfully.”

— David Richo

4. “Once we love ourselves, people no longer look good to us unless they are good for us.”

— David Richo

5. “Synchronicity is a term used by Carl Jung to describe coincidences that are related by meaningfulness rather than by cause and effect.”

— David Richo

6. “We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.”

— David Richo

7. “We are born with inalienable emotional needs for love, safety, acceptance, freedom, attention, validation of our feelings, and physical holding. Healthy identity is based on the fulfillment of these needs.”

— David Richo

8. “Mindful grief means mourning and letting go of the past without expectation, fear, censure, blame, shame, control and so forth. Without such mindful grief, neither past nor person can be laid to rest.”

— David Richo

9. “Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.”

— David Richo

10. “Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.”

— David Richo

11. “Spirituality is the intersection of three paths: letting go of ego, an unconditional yes to the conditions of human existence, and an immeasurable compassion.”

— David Richo

12. “Our identity is like a kaleidoscope. With each turn we reset it not to a former or final state but to a new one that reflects the here-and-now positions of the pieces we have to work with. The design is always new because the shifts are continual. That is what makes kaleidoscopes, and us, so appealing and beautiful.”

— David Richo

13. “Once we make our relationship choices in an adult way, a prospective partner who is unavailable, nonreciprocal, or not open to processing feelings and issues, becomes, by those very facts, unappealing. Once we love ourselves, people no longer look good to us unless they are good for us.”

— David Richo

14. “The opposite of interpersonal trust is not mistrust. It is despair. This is because we have given up on believing that trustworthiness and fulfillment are possible from others. We have lost our hope in our fellow humans.”

— David Richo

15. “A wound does not destroy us. It activates our self-healing powers. The point is not to “put it behind you” but to keep benefiting from the strength it has awakened.”

— David Richo

16. “True optimism is not the prospect of control over pain or elimination of it but survival through it.”

— David Richo

17. “The human heart holds much more love than it can ever disburse in one lifetime.”

— David Richo

18. “A healthy person is not perfect but perfectible, not a done deal but a work in progress. Staying healthy takes discipline, work, and patience, which is why our life is a journey and perforce a heroic one.”

— David Richo

19. “Mindfulness is both a state of being and a daily spiritual practice, a form of meditation.”

— David Richo

20. “We do not live on the Earth, we are a part of how the Earth lives.”

— David Richo

21. “In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, a depression, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission. When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition.”

— David Richo

22. “Bread takes the effort of kneading but also requires sitting quietly while the dough rises with a power all its own.”

— David Richo

23. “There is a natural and inviolable tendency in things to bloom into whatever they truly are in the core of their being. All we have to do is align ourselves with what wants to happen naturally and put in the effort that is our part in helping it happen.”

— David Richo

24. “When we feel unsafe with someone and still stay with him, we damage our ability to discern trustworthiness in those we will meet in the future.”

— David Richo

25. “Evoke one good memory for each bad one from now on.”

— David Richo

26. “We don’t fear physical closeness because we fear proximity itself. Most of us earnestly want physical contact with those who love us. Rather we fear what we will feel when we get too close. The real fear, then, is of ourselves. This fear is not something to rebuke ourselves for. It is our deepest vulnerability, the very quality that makes us most lovable.”

— David Richo

27. “Once we understand that what happens beyond our control may be just what we need, we see that acceptance of reality can be our way of participating in our own evolution.”

— David Richo

28. “What if all that happens to us is exactly what schools us in how to evolve in love in the course of life? That is the very definition of synchronicity, meaningful coincidence: Just the right events and people come along to allow us to articulate the love we are inside. All of them are emissaries of some nuance of light we need to let the full colors of our love appear in all their incandescence.”

— David Richo

29. “Just a little progress is freedom from fear. – Bhagavad Gita.”

— David Richo

30. “Early fear was felt cellularly and was indeed real. Defensive postures were necessary, but defenses generalize cellularly in adulthood and do not expire. It takes conscious work to undo them. Ironically, as long as we keep using defenses, we actually maintain the original force of the fear.”

— David Richo

31. “Self-actualization is not a sudden happening or even the permanent result of long effort. The eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint Milarupa suggested: “Do not expect full realization; simply practice every day of your life.” A healthy person is not perfect but perfectible, not a done deal but a work in progress. Staying healthy takes discipline, work, and patience, which is why our life is a journey and perforce a heroic one.”

— David Richo

32. “We were born with four words engraved on our bodies and in our hearts: Love me, hold me.”

— David Richo

33. “There are ghosts asleep inside every one of us: arcane issues never addressed, ancient griefs never laid to rest, suspicions, self-doubts, banished longings, secret meanings.”

— David Richo

34. “The challenge is to find our destiny in exactly what we are refusing to engage in.”

— David Richo

35. “Real love does not come off the rack; it is uniquely tailored by the lover to the beloved. Part of the pain of letting go of someone who really loved you is letting go of being loved in that special way.”

— David Richo

36. “When we notice a connection between our present fears and their origins in early life, we are finding out how much of our identity is designed by fear. Is fear the architect of me?”

— David Richo

37. “A lack of love means not receiving the five A’s of adult love: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing us to be ourselves.”

— David Richo

38. “I see that mankind still survives after all its attempts to destroy itself and so I surmise that it is the law of love that rules mankind.”

— David Richo

39. “The more invested I am in my own ideas about reality, the more those experiences will feel like victimizations rather than the ups and downs of relating. Actually, I believe that the less I conceptualize things that way, the more likely it is that people will want to stay by me, because they will not feel burdened, consciously or unconsciously, by my projections, judgments, entitlements, or unrealistic expectations.”

— David Richo

40. “Love is experienced differently by each of us, but for most of us five aspects of love stand out. We feel loved when we receive attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection, and when we are allowed the freedom to live in accord with our own deepest needs and wishes.”

— David Richo

41. “Love is the possibility of possibilities. Its farthest reach is beyond us, no matter how long we love or how much. It will always remain the mute mystery to whose ecstasy and ache we can only surrender with a yes.”

— David Richo

42. “We feel loved when we receive attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection, and when we are allowed the freedom to live in accord with our own deepest needs and wishes. These.”

— David Richo

43. “It is not that practice makes perfect but that practice is perfect, combining effort with an openness to grace.”

— David Richo

44. “Our tears are precious, necessary, and part of what make us such endearing creatures.”

— David Richo

45. “May those whose hell it is To hate and hurt Be turned into lovers Bringing flowers.”

— David Richo

46. “When I see I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see I am everything, that is love. My life is a movement between these two. – NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ.”

— David Richo

47. “We can actually reconstruct our past by examining what we think, say, feel, expect, believe, and do in an intimate relationship now.”

— David Richo

48. “The ability to hear someone is really about trust, not simply about communication. A trust issue always lurks beneath a communication difficulty.”

— David Richo

49. “The heart itself cannot break, for its very nature is soft and open. What breaks open when we see things as they are is the protective shell of ego identity we have built around ourselves in order to avoid feeling pain. When the heart breaks out of this shell, we feel quite raw and vulnerable. Yet that is also the beginning of feeling real compassion for ourselves and others. – John Welwood Ordinary Magic.”

— David Richo

50. “Most people in relationships seldom know what they really want, ask for what they really want, or show what they really feel. Most people avoid or fear intimacy, consistent.”

— David Richo