Top 400 Richard Rohr Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Only hour by hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.”

— Richard Rohr

52. “Your True Self is that part of you that knows who you are and whose you are, although largely unconsciously. Your False Self is just who you think you are – but thinking doesn’t make it so.”

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

55. “Holier-than-thou people usually end up holier than nobody.”

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

57. “When you haven’t found inner meaning, you will always substitute outer performance. It’s the only way to fill that void, that sense of significance – that I am significant. So almost the degree of outer performance can, in many cases, mirror the lack of inner alignment.”

— Richard Rohr

58. “The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it.”

— Richard Rohr

59. “The ego hates losing – even to God.”

— Richard Rohr

60. “You come to God not by being strong, but by being weak; not by being right, but through your mistakes.”

— Richard Rohr

61. “The phrase, ‘You must die before you die,’ is found in most of the world religions. If you don’t learn how to die early, you spend the rest of your life avoiding failure. When you can free your True Self, the whole spiritual life opens up.”

— Richard Rohr

62. “Yes, transformation is often more about unlearning than learning, which is why the religious traditions call it “conversion” or “repentance.”

— Richard Rohr

63. “Forgiveness is to let go of our hope for a different or better past.”

— Richard Rohr

64. “God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history.”

— Richard Rohr

65. “As Desmond Tutu told me on a recent trip to Cape Town, “We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in!”

— Richard Rohr

66. “There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments-and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it.”

— Richard Rohr

67. “Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.”

— Richard Rohr

68. “Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.”

— Richard Rohr

69. “If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.”

— Richard Rohr

70. “We all become well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. Most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot.”

— Richard Rohr

71. “Much of the work of midlife is to tell the difference between those who are dealing with their issues through you and those who are really dealing with you.”

— Richard Rohr

72. “As any good therapist will tell you, you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge, and what you do not consciously acknowledge will remain in control of you from within, festering and destroying you and those around you.”

— Richard Rohr

73. “The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.”

— Richard Rohr

74. “Jesus is never upset at sinners; he is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners.”

— Richard Rohr

75. “The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.”

— Richard Rohr

76. “You surrender to love; you do not accomplish love by willpower.”

— Richard Rohr

77. “Solitude is a courageous encounter with our naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure love.”

— Richard Rohr

78. “God for us, God alongside us, God within us.”

— Richard Rohr

79. “Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.”

— Richard Rohr

80. “In my experience, if you are not radically grateful every day, resentment always takes over.”

— Richard Rohr

81. “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. There is no path toward love except by practicing love. War will always produce more war. Violence can never bring about true peace.”

— Richard Rohr

82. “Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.”

— Richard Rohr

83. “The task of the second half of life is, quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver.”

— Richard Rohr

84. “Francis’s all-night prayer, “Who are you, O God, and who am I?” is probably a perfect prayer, because it is the most honest prayer we can offer.”

— Richard Rohr

85. “The spiritual world is hidden and perfectly revealed in the physical world.”

— Richard Rohr

86. “Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing “contemplation.”

— Richard Rohr

87. “God is always drawing us closer, blow by blow and bit by bit. And most of the time we do not even know it is happening.”

— Richard Rohr

88. “Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”

— Richard Rohr

89. “It is in falling down that we learn almost everything that matters spiritually.”

— Richard Rohr

90. “When you get your “Who am I?” question right, all the “What should I do?” questions tend to take care of themselves.”

— Richard Rohr

91. “The healthy do not need a doctor, but sick people do. I have not come to coddle the comfortable, but to set trapped people free for a new life.” Luke 5:31–32.”

— Richard Rohr

92. “Integrity largely has to do with purifying our intentions and a growing honesty about our actual motives.”

— Richard Rohr

93. “We always become what we behold; the presence that we practice matters.”

— Richard Rohr

94. “There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes.”

— Richard Rohr

95. “Failure and suffering are the great equalizers and levelers among humans. Success is just the opposite. Communities and commitment can form around suffering much more than around how wonderful or superior we are.”

— Richard Rohr

96. “The incarnation has become resurrection in you.”

— Richard Rohr

97. “You normally have to let go of the old and go through a stage of unknowing or confusion, before you can move to another level of awareness or new capacity.”

— Richard Rohr

98. “You never become humble except through fully accepting humiliations – usually many times.”

— Richard Rohr

99. “If religion cannot find a meaning for human suffering, humanity is in major trouble. All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. Great religion shows you what to do with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If.”

— Richard Rohr

100. “The Crucified One is God’s standing solidarity with the suffering, the tragedy, and the disaster of all time, and God’s promise that it will not have the final word. The Risen One is God’s final word about the universe and what God plans to do with all suffering.”

— Richard Rohr