41 Obedience Quotes To Inspire

In a world that often celebrates rebellious spirits and individualism, the virtue of obedience can sometimes seem undervalued. Yet, heedful obedience—to mentors, principles, or higher callings—shapes our character, bringing structure, wisdom, and profound personal growth. Whether it’s about adhering to ethical standards, listening to a mentor, or simply following a daily routine, obedience helps in cultivating discipline and respect. In this collection, we’ve curated the top 41 quotes about obedience to rekindle your inspiration and remind you of its transformative power in our lives. Dive in to explore timeless wisdom that highlights the importance and beauty of obedience.

1. “To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” - C.S. Lewis

2. “The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.” - Stanley Milgram

3. “Smee, you are a supreme idjit.""Aye, Cap'n.” - Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

4. “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.” - Stanley Milgram

5. “I don't do what I'm told, but I might do what you want if you ask me nicely.” - Cassandra Clare

6. “Whenever Papa said, 'Jump,' I was always the first one in the air.” - Ann B. Ross

7. “Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish.” - John Piper

8. “There! Now we're friends!" declared the minx. "Say you're sorry about my sister -""I am desolated!""That's a good boy!” - Agatha Christie

9. “If you will pardon my saying so," Tharkay said, "you will never satisfy them on that point: the last thing you or Temeraire will ever give anyone is quiet obedience. Have you considered it might be better not to try?” - Naomi Novik

10. “Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom.” - D.H. Lawrence

11. “The distance between your knowledge of truth and your obedience is called lack of integrity. And the amount of negative behavior--or lack of integrity--a person exhibits is directly proportional to their amount of pain." - Tara Leigh's therapist (p.118)” - Tara Leigh Cobble

12. “Together we shared a bond not even death would violate.” - Dee Remy

13. “God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself.” - Criss Jami

14. “You are evidence of your mother's strength, especially if you are a rebellious knucklehead and regardless she has always maintained her sanity.” - Criss Jami

15. “Because of course she had known she must go. She always did the thing because in obedience lay the integrity that God asked of her. If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but she had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root.” - Elizabeth Goudge

16. “The heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 ... obeyed by faith ... obedience is the pathway to holiness ... no one will become holy apart from a life of faith. Faith enables us to claim the promises of God, but it also enables us to obey the commands of God.” - Jerry Bridges

17. “We obey God's Law, not to be loved but because we are loved in Christ.” - Jerry Bridges

18. “Why do you need that thing?" September asked. "None of the airports back home have them.""They do. You just can't see them right," Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. "All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that's all. Whereas Rupert here? He's as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box.” - Catherynne M. Valente

19. “This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn't know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you."He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea came to him. "It's the painting of a dutiful daughter," he said eventually, looking at her cautiously to see her reaction. "You want to please. You are always aware of what the person looking at this picture will think of it. Because of that you've missed something important. Does that make sense?"She thought, then nodded. "All right," she said grudgingly and with just a touch of despair in her voice. "You win."Julien grunted. "Have another go, then. I shall come back and come back until you figure it out.""And you'll know?""You'll know. I will merely get the benefit of it.” - Iain Pears

20. “There is no excuse for anyone to misunderstand God's Word if he will, like a child, accept the Bible for what it says, and be honest enough to consecrate himself to obey it. He must accept the Bible as God's Word. He must believe that God could not be honest if He sought to hide from man the very things He will judge him by in the end. He must accept the Bible as the final Court of Appeal on its own subjects, and forget man's interpretations and distortion of the Word. He must believe that God knows what He is talking about; that He knows how to express Himself in human language; that He said what He meant, and meant what He said; and that what He says on a subject is more important than what any man may say about it.” - Finis Jennings Dake

21. “But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival.” - Stanley Milgram

22. “Obedience is the greatest refuge of the weak and the coward people!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

23. “Israel's first king, Saul, looked like he was born for the role. He was tall, handsome, intelligent, and sensitive to God's leading. But he eventually lost most of his attractive qualities, the most important being obedience.” - Swindoll Charles R.

24. “[N]one of us drinks the chalice of our existence to the last drop. None of us is fully obedient. Each of us falls short of the human nature entrusted to us.” - Johann Baptist Metz

25. “There is nothing in the world or the Church — except the church's disobedience — to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility.” - Robert Speer

26. “Love withers under constraints. Its very essence is liberty; it is comparable neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries are in confidence, equality and unreserve.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley

27. “Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women."[Commencement Address, Wellesley College, 1996]” - Nora Ephron

28. “It's not the things I don't understand about the Bible that bother me; it's the things I understand with perfect clarity and don't comply with that keep me up at night.” - Bill Hybels

29. “We are apt to imagine that if Jesus Christ constrains us and we obey Him, He will lead us to great success; but He does not. If our Lord has ever constrained you, and you obeyed Him, what was your dream of His purpose? Never put your dream of success as God’s purpose for you; His purpose may be exactly the opposite.” - Oswald Chambers

30. “Because I am not yet living up to what Jesus expects me to be in those red letters in the Bible, I always define myself as somebody who is saved by God's grace and is on his way to becoming a Christian. (...) Being saved is trusting in what Christ did for us, but being Christian is dependent on the way we respond to what he did for us.” - Tony Campolo

31. “No one should be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of his life where he is consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? ... How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

32. “The union Christ had with the Father was the greatest that we can conceive of in this life—if indeed we can conceive of it. Yet we have no indication that even Jesus was constantly awash with revelations as to what he should do. His union with the Father was so great that he was at all times obedient. This obedience was something that rested in his mature will and understanding of his life before God, not on always being told “Now do this” and “Now do that” with regard to every details of his life or work.” - Dallas Willard

33. “Lord, if you show me the way, I will follow You.” - Brother Andrew

34. “Describing Bonhoeffer's demeanor on returning to danger in Germany rather than safety in America, with "with a strong and joyful firmness such as only arises out of realized freedom. ” - Eric Metaxas

35. “You will know as much of God, and only as much of God, as you are willing to put into practice.” - Eric Liddell

36. “Legalism is when we try to obtain the result of obedience by our own means and strength. It is self-righteousness, as opposed to God's righteousness covering us, and the two are as different as spirit and flesh.” - Kelly Minter

37. “That's the excitement in obedience, finding out later what God had in mind.” - Brother Andrew

38. “It is when we are at our darkest hour, when we can see no evidence that God loves us or that he is even there to listen to our prayers, much less answer them...and yet, we still obey.It is then that the devil is reminded that his cause is lost.” - Tom King

39. “...it is a mistake to reduce every decision about Christian living to a "Heaven-or-Hell issue."For example, some ask if the Bible specifically says a certain action is a "sin" or will send them to "Hell." If not, they feel free to indulge in that action unreservedly and ignore any scriptural principles involved. But this approach is legalistic, which means living by rules or basing salvation on works. It treats the Bible as a law book, focusing on the letter and looking for loopholes.By contrast, the Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace teaches us how to live righteously, and faith leads us into obedience. (See Titus 2:11-12; Romans1:5; Hebrews 11:7-8.)” - David K. Bernard

40. “By disobeying immoral orders, that individual preserves the institution's highest rank - dignity.” - Bryant McGill

41. “Greatness is obedience to what Jesus said, to the commission to go to the ends of the earth. It means setting out to make some difference somewhere to someone, in the Name of Jesus Christ.” - Ross Paterson