Richard Rohr quotes

Richard Rohr is an American Franciscan friar, priest, and spiritual writer, renowned for his teachings on contemplation and Christian mysticism. His works emphasize spiritual transformation, non-dual thinking, and the universal message of love. He has inspired countless readers and seekers around the world through his books, talks, and retreats. Here are 66 of his quotes:

Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.

Richard Rohr

One is struck in the study of saints, angels and gods by a pattern that seems quaint and harmless. Yet, it is so common that I know there must be a deeper meaning. There always seem to be guardians and spirits of doors, bridges, exits and entranceways.

Richard Rohr

Transformed people transform people.

Richard Rohr

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

Jesus is much more concerned about shaking your foundations, giving you an utterly alternative self image, world image, and God image, and thus reframing your entire reality. Mere inspiration can never do this.

Richard Rohr

there is no path to peace, but peace itself is the path.

Richard Rohr

In the second half of life, people have less power to infatuate you. But they also have much less power to control you or hurt you.

Richard Rohr

In solitude, at last, we're able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined-by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence.

Richard Rohr

When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us.

Richard Rohr

The big truth for men is that often we have to leave home in the first half of life before we can return home at a later stage and find our soul there.

Richard Rohr

... religion either produces the very best people or the very worst.

Richard Rohr

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.

Richard Rohr

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

Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had.

Richard Rohr

We have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That's not primal freedom. That's a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances. That's what great religion offers us. That's what real prayer offers us. That's why the saints could be imprisoned and not lose their souls. They could be put down and persecuted like Jesus and still not lose their joy, their heart, or their perspective. Secular freedom is having to do what you want to do. Religious freedom is wanting to do what you have to do.

Richard Rohr

Group-think is a substitute for God-think. The belief is that God is found only by our group. The next step is to establish that identification with our group as the only way to serve God.

Richard Rohr

Prayer must lead us beyond mind, words, and ideas to a more spacious place where God has a chance to get in.

Richard Rohr

Power should be entrusted only to those who do not seek it.

Richard Rohr

Religion has not tended to create seekers or searchers, has not tended to create honest, humble people who trust that God is always beyond them. We aren't focused on the great mystery. Religion has, rather, tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers. That's why so much of the West is understandably abandoning religion. People know the great mystery cannot be that simple and facile.

Richard Rohr

So much is happening on earth that cannot be fixed or explained, but it can be felt and suffered. I think a Christian is one who, along with Jesus, agrees to feel, to suffer the pain of the world.

Richard Rohr

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

Richard Rohr

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