Top 400 Richard Rohr Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”

— Richard Rohr

2. “Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.”

— Richard Rohr

3. “Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.”

— Richard Rohr

4. “Transformed people transform people.”

— Richard Rohr

5. “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.”

— Richard Rohr

6. “There is nothing to prove and nothing to protect. I am who I am and it’s enough.”

— Richard Rohr

7. “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.”

— Richard Rohr

8. “God comes to us disguised as our life.”

— Richard Rohr

9. “Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.”

— Richard Rohr

10. “The two Virtues of Equanimity and Compassion become more available to the person whose ego-shell has been smashed-either by great suffering or by great love-or by both.”

— Richard Rohr

11. “Prayer is not about changing God, but being willing to let God change us.”

— Richard Rohr

12. “The path of descent is the path of transformation. Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.”

— Richard Rohr

13. “The most common one-liner in the Bible is, “Do not be afraid.” Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times.”

— Richard Rohr

14. “If God is Trinity and Jesus is the face of God, then it is a benevolent universe. God is not someone to be afraid of, but is the Ground of Being and on our side.”

— Richard Rohr

15. “Religion is one of the safest places to hide from God.”

— Richard Rohr

16. “God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.”

— Richard Rohr

17. “It is at the bottom where we find grace; for like water, grace seeks the lowest place and there it pools up.”

— Richard Rohr

18. “When you don’t need to play the victim or create victims you are FREE.”

— Richard Rohr

19. “Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change.”

— Richard Rohr

20. “All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.”

— Richard Rohr

21. “I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken open, at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.”

— Richard Rohr

22. “The cross is the standing statement of what we do to one another and to ourselves. The resurrection is the standing statement of what God does to us in return.”

— Richard Rohr

23. “Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity; Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God.”

— Richard Rohr

24. “The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God, not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong.”

— Richard Rohr

25. “Resurrection” is another word for change, but particularly positive change – which we tend to see only in the long run. In the short run, it often just looks like death.”

— Richard Rohr

26. “You cannot heal what you cannot acknowledge.”

— Richard Rohr

27. “The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it’s not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.”

— Richard Rohr

28. “The people who know God well – mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God – always meet a lover, not a dictator.”

— Richard Rohr

29. “Faith is not for overcoming obstacles; it is for experiencing them – all the way through!”

— Richard Rohr

30. “We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it.”

— Richard Rohr

31. “We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.”

— Richard Rohr

32. “Religion is lived by people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is lived by people who have been through hell.”

— Richard Rohr

33. “I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona.”

— Richard Rohr

34. “Remember finally, that the ashes that were on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.”

— Richard Rohr

35. “In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.”

— Richard Rohr

36. “People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.”

— Richard Rohr

37. “Every viewpoint is a view from a point.”

— Richard Rohr

38. “Heartbreaks, disappointments and even our own weaknesses can serve as stepping-stones to the second half of life transformation. Failings are the foundation for growth. Those who have fallen, failed or ‘gone down’ are the only ones who understand ‘up.’”

— Richard Rohr

39. “Once God and grace move us to the second half of life, religion becomes a mystical matter, rather than a moral matter.”

— Richard Rohr

40. “Love is not something you do; love is someone you are. It is your True Self.8 Love is where you came from and love is where you’re going. It’s not something you can buy. It’s not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit – or what some theologians name uncreated grace.”

— Richard Rohr

41. “Religions should be understood as only the fingers that point to the moon, not the moon itself.”

— Richard Rohr

42. “The greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order.”

— Richard Rohr

43. “Worship of Jesus is rather harmless and risk-free; actually following Jesus changes everything.”

— Richard Rohr

44. “It is so important to balance orthodoxy with orthopraxy.”

— Richard Rohr

45. “The Gospel is not a fire insurance policy for the next world, but a life assurance policy for this world.”

— Richard Rohr

46. “Love flows unstoppably downward, around every obstacle – like water. Love and water seek not the higher place but always the lower. That’s why forgiveness is often the most powerful display of love in action.”

— Richard Rohr

47. “Men must learn how to grieve, or they are inevitably angry or controlling, and they don’t even know why.”

— Richard Rohr

48. “Only hour by hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.”

— Richard Rohr

49. “Stinking thinking” is the universal addiction. Substance addictions like alcohol and drugs are merely the most visible form of addiction, but actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality.”

— Richard Rohr

50. “The movement toward gratitude, authenticity, and union is the natural and organic inner work of the second half of our lives.”

— Richard Rohr