Marianne Williamson Quotes (1952-)

“You simply cannot have the future you want if you are not willing to clean up your past... And its time for us to put some things to bed on that issue. Its time. The civil war was over in 1865.”

“We should have total public funding of federal campaigns. That is the only way to get the dark money out of politics...the undue influence of money on our politics is the cancer underlying all other cancers.”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

“The main place we need more mental health counselors is in American public schools. Right now we have one mental health counselor for every 1500 children...yet we have school “trauma rooms”...and elementary school kids on suicide watch!”

“Purity of heart will not make us poor. The exaltation of poverty as a spiritual virtue is of the ego, not the spirit. A person acting from a motivation of contribution and service rises to such a level of moral authority, that worldly success is a natural result... Give all your gifts away in service to the world. If you want to paint, don’t wait for a grant. Paint a wall in your town that looks drab and uninviting. You never know who’s going to see that wall. Whatever it is you want to do, give it away in service to your community. (Ch. 7... Sales to Service)”

“No one doubts what any of us would do for our own children, but now we must stand for everyone's children. We need a Cabinet-level position, a Department of Children and Youth, to even begin to get this problem under control. American women especially have a unique role to play here. For our system was designed before women had a voice in the public realm, and raising children was deemed to just be "women's work." But we certainly have a voice now, and we need to raise it on behalf of every mother's child. In any advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, a common characteristic is the fierce behavior of the adult female of the species when she senses a threat to her cubs. Ours are threatened now, and we need to get fierce.”

“Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. 'Know thyself' is not a narcissistic pursuit.”

“The US will be a violent society until we decide to be nonviolent. Our task, if we do decide that, is to proactively and intentionally wage peace.”

“Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.”

“Our species will not survive another 100 years if we don’t move from a competitive to a cooperative mode of existence. “Me first” is an obsolete, unsustainable perspective.”

“I heard the Dalai Lama say that a British physicist had told him, “Every nation should view every other nation as a domestic partner.” That one small shift in thinking changes everything.”

“Our government should not be run like a business; it should be run like a family...In any advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, a common characteristic is the fierce behavior of the adult female of the species when she senses a threat to her cubs. Ours are threatened now, and we need to get fierce.”

“Spiritual teacher Williamson believes, "Our country's way of dealing with security issues is obsolete. We cannot simply rely on brute force to rid ourselves of international enemies." She recognizes that, on the contrary, the U.S. militarized foreign policy creates enemies, and our huge military budget "simply increase(s) the coffers of the military-industrial complex." She writes, "The only way to make peace with your neighbors is to make peace with your neighbors."Williamson proposes a 10 or 20 year plan to transform our wartime economy into a "peace-time economy." “"From massive investment in the development of clean energy, to the retrofitting of our buildings and bridges, to the building of new schools and the creation of a green manufacturing base," she writes, "it is time to release this powerful sector of American genius to the work of promoting life instead of death."”

“Marianne Williamson has been a surprisingly valuable voice in the 2019 Democratic presidential debates. She’s been radical in the real meaning of the word, calling on America to treat not just our tangle of symptoms but the underlying diseases. [In]...Williamson’s statement in the first debate about the Trump administration’s attack on immigrants. She didn’t just call it “a crime,” she said, “I haven’t heard anybody on this stage who has talked about American foreign policy in Latin America.” More and more people have been coming to the U.S. from Central America because we ripped the region to shreds during the 1980s, and their countries still haven’t recovered.”

“With the layoff of Williamson’s campaign staff, her presidential bid is “effectively over.” While mainstream journalists “ignored or mocked” her belief in “the fundamentally spiritual nature of our political crisis,” though, their “grotesque jeering” was “the ­ultimate vindication of her position.” Williamson didn’t attack specific policies; her opponents were “cruelty, avarice, crassness, irreligion and indifferentism” — the reasons “our society will remain sick.””

“Williamson told RNS she was particularly frustrated by what she saw as criticism of her offering prayer and thought exercises for AIDS patients in the 1980s. "We don't believe that because you pray with someone they're not supposed to go to the doctor," said Williamson, who is Jewish but espouses what she describes as a universal spirituality.”

“America doesn’t need another president. We’ve had forty-five of those, and look how that’s turned out. We here at The Stanford Occasionally know what this country really needs is a spiritual advisor, a candidate who can reveal our own Inner Light and lead the nation to self-actualization. That candidate is Marianne Williamson.”