Top 400 Richard Rohr Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Men must learn how to grieve, or they are inevitably angry or controlling, and they don’t even know why.”

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

54. “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

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

58. “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

59. “There is a part of you that is Love itself, and that is what we must fall into. It is already there. Once you move your identity to that level of deep inner contentment, you will realize you are drawing upon a Life that is much larger than your own and from a deeper abundance.”

— Richard Rohr

60. “The journey to happiness involves finding the courage to go down into ourselves and take responsibility for what’s there: all of it.”

— Richard Rohr

61. “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

62. “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

63. “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

64. “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

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

67. “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

68. “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

69. “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

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

— Richard Rohr

71. “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

72. “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

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

78. “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

79. “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

80. “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

81. “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

82. “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

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

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

— Richard Rohr

87. “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

88. “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

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

— Richard Rohr

90. “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

91. “It is important to know that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but in fact, certitude and the demand for certitude!”

— Richard Rohr

92. “The good, the true, and the beautiful are always their own best argument for themselves – by themselves – and in themselves.”

— Richard Rohr

93. “Mystery is not something that you cannot understand, but it is something that is endlessly understandable! It is multilayered and pregnant with meaning and never totally admits to closure or resolution.”

— Richard Rohr

94. “The Crucified and Risen Christ uses the mistakes of the past to create a positive future, a future of redemption instead of retribution. He does not eliminate or punish the mistakes. He uses them for transformative purposes. People formed by such love are indestructible. Forgiveness might just be the very best description of what God’s goodness engenders in humanity.”

— Richard Rohr

95. “Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it’s difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.”

— Richard Rohr

96. “The Gospel gives our suffering personal and cosmic meaning, by connecting our pain to the pain of others, and finally, by connecting us to the very pain of God.”

— Richard Rohr

97. “Most women prefer circles of sharing to pyramids and hierarchies. They prefer conversation to construction. They will usually choose nurturance and empathy over competition and climbing. They will normally choose connection over simple performance games.”

— Richard Rohr

98. “Salvation is not sin perfectly avoided, as the ego would prefer; but in fact, salvation is sin turned on its head and used in our favor.”

— Richard Rohr

99. “Enlightenment is not about knowing as much as it is about unknowing; it is not so much learning as unlearning. It is about surrendering and letting go rather than achieving and possessing. It’s more about entering the mystery than arriving at a mental certitude.”

— Richard Rohr

100. “If we don’t learn to mythologize our lives, inevitably we will pathologize them.”

— Richard Rohr