# Marianne Williamson

Marianne Deborah Williamson (born 8 July 1952) is a spiritual activist, author, lecturer and founder of the Peace Alliance, a grass roots campaign supporting legislation currently before Congress to establish a United States Department of Peace.

## Quotes

* Each of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world.
** The Law of Divine Compensation: On Work, Money, and Miracles (2012)
* What I have proposed is $200 to $500 billion (in reparations) to descendants of slaves/ I think anything less than $100 billion is an insult... We should have a reparations council, board of trustees as it were, selecting this counsel – very, very significant because it has to be a board of trustees ... [that] white America trusts and black America trusts... I don’t think the average American is a racist — actually, I don’t at all, but I do think the average American is vastly undereducated, uninformed
** Quoted in Marianne Williamson on reparations: 'Anything less than $100 billion is an insult', in The Hill, (16 April 2019)
* The underlying cause has to do with deep, deep, deep realms of racial injustice, both in our criminal justice system and in our economic system... The Democratic Party should be on the side of reparations for slavery for this very reason... I do not believe that the average American is a racist, but the average American is woefully undereducated about the history of race in the United States.
** Statement regarding a police shooting in South Bend, Indiana, in her first Democratic Party presidential debate (27 June 2019), as quoted in "Long-shot 2020 Dem Marianne Williamson calls for reparations, after debate skirmish over South Bend shooting" by Brooke Singman in Fox News (27 June 2019)
* What reparations carry that race-based policies do not, is that reparations carry spiritual force there is an inherent mea culpa it is more than just economic restitution, its more than just economic restitution... It is a moral and an emotional and a psychological effect of reparations because it is an inherent acknowledgment of a wrong that has been done and a willingness to right it. … 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.
** Interview with Fox News, as quoted in "Long-shot 2020 Dem Marianne Williamson calls for reparations, after debate skirmish over South Bend shooting" by Brooke Singman. in Fox News (27 June 2019)
* We need to talk about more than just the health care plan. We need to realize we have a sickness care rather than a health care system. We need to be the party talking about why so many of our chemical policies and our food policies and our agricultural policies and our environment policies and even our economic policies are leading to sick people to begin with.
** Quoted in We Desperately Need Marianne Williamson’s Message, The Intercept, Jon Schwarz (5 August 2019)
* I haven’t heard anybody on this stage who has talked about American foreign policy in Latin America... There is an injustice that continues to form a toxicity underneath the surface, an emotional turbulence, people heal when there’s some deep truth-telling.
** We Desperately Need Marianne Williamson’s Message. The Intercept, Jon Schwarz (5 August 2019)
* Nuclear weapons are a symptom of conflict, fear, insecurity, and a drive to dominate. Denuclearization will follow more naturally and easily with decreased tensions and improved relationships. Sanctions are a form of economic warfare with a high rate of failure. Punitive, coercive policies do not always achieve the best outcomes. Sanctions harm innocent people, escalate conflicts and can put us on a path to war. They can provoke targeted populations to rally round the flag, support hardliners and inflame resentment against America. We can achieve superior outcomes with clear-eyed respect and steps towards thawing the ice.
** Quoted in Candidates Answer CFR's Questions Marianne Williamson, Council on Foreign Relations, August 16, 2019
* The United States should have an equal and simultaneous support for both the legitimate security concerns of Israel, and the human rights, dignity and economic opportunities of the Palestinian people... I do not believe the settlements on the West Bank are legal. Also, I would rescind the president's affirmation of sovereignty of Israel over the Golan Heights. I understand the occupation of the Golan Heights, but only until there is a stable government in Syria with whom one can negotiate. According to international law, the occupation of a territory does not give the occupying country a right to annex it. Also, according to international law, the resources of the occupied territory are to be used for the good of those living there. I also do not support the blockade of Gaza.
** Quoted in Candidates Answer CFR's Questions Marianne Williamson, Council on Foreign Relations, August 16, 2019
* If the US really wants to see a peaceful political transition in Venezuela it needs to help create the conditions for effective dialogue, which means supporting moderate factions on both sides that seek a peaceful transition and supporting existing efforts to promote dialogue, in particular those being led at the moment - with some success - by the Norwegian government. The historical record shows that when the US government engages in aggressive intervention to remove a leader that it dislikes, its efforts generally backfire or lead to unforeseen political and social developments that are not easy to resolve. The best policy in Venezuela and most places is to support efforts that allow the country’s citizens to decide on their political future (even if it’s not exactly the sort of future that the US favors).
** Quoted in Candidates Answer CFR's Questions Marianne Williamson, Council on Foreign Relations, August 16, 2019
* We don't believe that because you pray with someone they're not supposed to go to the doctor.
** Quoted in Marianne Williamson ends presidential bid, says campaign tried her faith, Religion News Service, (10 January 2020)
* In ‘A Course in Miracles’ there is a line: ‘The Christ in you cannot be crucified,’ What that's saying is that the truth of who you are cannot be affected by lovelessness because you were not created to be the effect of lovelessness in yourself or in others. That means if I am identifying with the attacks on me, then, by definition, I am identifying with the false self.
** Marianne Williamson ends presidential bid, says campaign tried her faith, Religion News Service, (10 January 2020)
* 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.
** Satire- Stanford Occasionally officially endorses Marianne Williamson for president, The Stanford Daily, by Lana Tleimat (24 January 2020)
* A record 14 million children in America are not getting enough to eat... even before the pandemic, in the richest nation in the world, about 13 million children went to school hungry every day. A report from January found more than 1.5 million public school students were experiencing homelessness, the highest number in over a dozen years. Millions of children attend classrooms where there aren't adequate means to teach them to read by the time they're 8 years old—in which case, their chances of high school graduation are drastically decreased and chances of incarceration are drastically increased.
** Marianne Williamson: If We Want a Prosperous America Tomorrow, Take Care of Our Children Today, Newsweek (23 July 2020)
* Millions of our kids (40 percent of all girls in Chicago public schools...) show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, and the COVID-19 crisis is quickly making that worse. Schools across the country are working to adopt "trauma-informed" teaching methods. Meanwhile, there is an average of only one school counselor for every 455 public school students... Consider the psychological and emotional effects of going to school each day well aware of school shootings and worried that the weird antisocial kid in class might want to kill you. Make no mistake about it, many of these children will be broken human beings 20 years from now.
** Marianne Williamson: If We Want a Prosperous America Tomorrow, Take Care of Our Children Today, Newsweek (23 July 2020)
* When people say the government should be run like a business, tell them that in many ways it already is—and that's the problem. Our government should not be run like a business; it should be run like a family. A business might rightfully put its short-term profits first, but a functional family puts the well-being of its children first. That's not a relative truth; it's a moral absolute... 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.
** Marianne Williamson: If We Want a Prosperous America Tomorrow, Take Care of Our Children Today, Newsweek (23 July 2020)
* As a nation, we have slithered like snakes across the floor to whatever hole where money lay, sacrificing the depths of our own humanity as we did so. And we are surprised now at the various crises among us? What should surprise us is that this didn't happen sooner. Just as the face of a fascistic president could have belonged to anyone, so the consequences of our spiritual malfeasance could have come in any form. Am I saying that America is reaping its karma? You bet I am, but that is never the end of the story. For just as the law of cause-and-effect is inviolable, so is God's mercy. When we come clean with the God of our own understanding—atoning, owning, admitting, all those words that ultimately mean the same thing—the darkest storm clouds are dissolved by light. But not immediately, and not until then. America is down on its knees this time. But that's not the bad news; it's the good news.
** Marianne Williamson: America's Karma, Newsweek, (4 September 2020)
* Candidate suppression is a form of voter suppression.
** "EXCLUSIVE: Marianne Williamson On Ukraine, Biden, Vaccines | Breaking Points" (at 35m36s), Breaking Points, 26 June 2023.

### A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992)

* Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power, p. 190 (p. 165 in some editions). This famous passage from her book is very often erroneously attributed to Nelson Mandela. About the mis-attribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."
** Variant which appears in the film Coach Carter (2005): "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
** Variant which appears in the film Akeelah and the Bee (2006), displayed in a picture frame on the wall, attributing it to Mandela: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."
* A miracle worker is an artist of the soul. There’s no higher art than living a good life. An artist informs the world of what’s available behind the masks we all wear. That’s what we’re all here to do. The reason so many of us are obsessed with becoming stars is because we’re not yet starring in our own lives. The cosmic spotlight isn’t pointed at you; it radiates from within you.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power
* If we wait for the world’s permission to shine, we will never receive it. The ego doesn’t give that permission. Only God does, and He has already done so. He has sent you here as His personal representative and is asking you to channel His love into the world. Are you waiting for a more important job? There isn’t one.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power
* How could Leonardo da Vinci not have painted? How could Shakespeare not have written? In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke tells a young writer to write only if he has to. We are to do what there is a deep psychological and emotional imperative for us to do. That’s our point of power, the source of our brilliance. Our power is not rationally or willfully called forth. It’s a divine dispensation, an act of grace.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power
* The thought system that dominates our culture is laced with selfish values, and relinquishing those values is a lot easier said than done. The journey to a pure heart can be highly disorienting. For years we may have worked for power, money and prestige. Now all of a sudden we’ve learned that those are just the values of a dying world. We don’t know where to search for motivation anymore.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service
* If we’re not working in order to get rich, then why are we working at all? What are we supposed to do all day? Just sit home and watch TV? Not at all, but thinking so is a temporary phase many people go through — when the values of the old world no longer have a hold on us, but the values of the new don’t yet grab your soul. They will.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service
* There comes a time, not too long into the journey to God, when the realization that the world could work beautifully if we would give it the chance, begins to excite us. It becomes our new motivation.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service
* The news isn’t how bad things are. The news is how good they could be. And our own activity could be part of the unfolding of Heaven on earth. There is no more powerful motivation than to feel we’re being used in the creation of a world where love has healed all wounds.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service
* We are no longer ambitious for ourselves, but are rather inspired by the vision of a healed world. Inspiration rearranges our energies. It sources within us a new power and direction. We no longer feel like we’re trying to carry a football to the finish line, clutching it to our chest and surrounded by hostile forces. We feel instead as though angels are pushing us from behind and making straight our path as we go.
** Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service
* 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 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service

### Williamson's quotes in social media

* The ground on which we’ll unite as Americans is the higher ground of moral repair. Not Left or Right, or even Democrats or Republicans. We’ll unite as Americans, having come to realize that aligning public policy with the goodness in our hearts is our best and only path forward.
** Twitter (1 Oct 2019)
* Economic system of the US was created & designed before women had a voice in the public realm. We do have a voice now; it’s important that we use it not to fit into the system but to change the system. The main engine of our economy should be the care & nurturance of our children
** Twitter (2 Oct 2019)
* The United States is number two in the world for hosting child pornography websites. Dangers to our children should be a top priority, yet only half the money appropriated to fight crimes against children online has been given to the effort.
** Twitter (2 Oct 2019)
* A person disconnected from empathy is a sociopath, but making that all about the president is to displace our outrage & responsibility from where it belongs. Our public policies have lacked empathy for decades. He did not create the spiritual void; the spiritual void created him.
** Twitter (22 Oct 2019)
* As long as health ins & Big Pharma determine so much health care policy, gun manufacturers so much gun safety policy, oil & gas companies so much environmental policy & defense contractors so much defense policy, we’re functioning not as a democracy but as a corporate aristocracy
** Twitter (22 Oct 2019)
* The military has more than 130 bands with more than 6000 musicians, costing about a half-billion dollars a year. Meanwhile the National Endowment for the Arts gets $155M, a paltry amount compared to other advanced democracies. Arts & artists should be robustly funded & supported!
** Twitter (24 Oct 2019)
* 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.
** Twitter (25 Oct 2019)
* We should have total public funding of federal campaigns. That is the only way to get the dark money out of politics. As president that will be my first piece of legislation to submit because the undue influence of money on our politics is the cancer underlying all other cancers.
** Twitter (24 Nov 2019)
* When 1% of the population owns more wealth than the bottom 90%, the last people you should be asking for economic advice are the people who created that situation.
** Twitter (26 Nov 2019)
* From a religious perspective, loving one another is the highest commandment. From a spiritual perspective, loving one another is the wisdom of the ages. From a political perspective, loving one another is just the smartest thing to do. Plus, today it’s the only survivable option.
** Twitter (26 Nov 2019)
* Trump did not create the worst dysfunctions of our democracy; our worst dysfunctions created him. He's the symptom, not the cause, of a dangerous slide away from vital democracy toward corporate authoritarian rule. The slide began 40 years ago and he's simply the climactic event.
** Twitter (15 Dec 2019)
* Being anti-slavery simply meant you didn’t agree with slavery; being an abolitionist meant you’d crossed a bridge inside yourself, from “I don’t agree” to “Not on my watch.” Which are you in relation to a corporate aristocracy that has corrupted our govt and eroded our democracy?
** Twitter (24 Dec 2019)
* Elementary students on suicide watch. Public schools with "trauma rooms." Teachers having to deal with students who have overwhelming behavioral problems on a daily basis. Millions of children with severe PTSD just from living in their neighborhoods. America, we have a problem.
** Twitter (28 Dec 2019)
* 13 million children are hungry in America. Yet most politicians do not even talk about it. Children aren’t old enough to vote, nor old enough to work therefore they have no financial leverage. They’re not old enough to advocate for themselves. That’s our job. The political establishment has simply normalized the despair of millions of American children who are chronically traumatized by poverty, hunger, and all manner of violence. This is what happens when government becomes more an instrument of corporate profits then of conscience. The vulnerabilities, challenges and chronic trauma of millions of American children should be recognized as a social justice issue. An economic system with no particular use for children - or for older people - has left both groups underserved. This country shouldn’t be run like a business, it should be run like a family. First we should take care of our children & older people, making sure they have everything they need to thrive. Everything else would then heal itself from there. Moral repair precedes societal repair.
** In a Twitter thread, 30 December 2019, Twitter.
* Money in politics is the cancer underlying all the others. The only way to heal it is thru public funding of federal campaigns plus a constitutional amendment. Til then, health insurance, big Pharma, gun manufacturers, oil & gas, food, chem & defense contractors run this country.
** Twitter (8 Jan 2020)
* America’s most important ally should be humanity itself. 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.
** Twitter (8 Jan 20)
* 21stC mindset different than 20th. There’s realization that either we will evolve into a higher level of compassion for everyone, or in time there will be no one left. Warmongers, climate change deniers, fossil fuel extractors, capitalists without conscience - they are dinosaurs.
** Twitter (9 Jan 20)
* A politics of conscience is still yet possible. And yes….love will prevail.
** Twitter (10 Jan 20)
* A country that can afford a $738 billion defense budget but will not ensure its school children a more healthy diet is a country whose moral values are spiraling down and whose future health care costs will be spiraling up.
** Twitter (18 Jan 20)

## Quotes about Williamson

* 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."
** Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J S Davies War and Peace and the 2020 Presidential Candidates, Common Dreams (27 March 2019)
* 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.
** We Desperately Need Marianne Williamson’s Message. It’s Ominous That We’re Only Getting It From Marianne Williamson, The Intercept, Jon Schwarz (5 August 2019)
* The most startling part of Williamson’s performance was her explanation on Tuesday of her support for reparations for slavery. CNN’s Don Lemon spoke of reparations as “financial assistance.” No, she responded, this was wrong: Reparations would not be financial assistance, but “payment of a debt that is owed.” And the point of reparations is not just money, but ending the price we pay for avoiding reality.
** We Desperately Need Marianne Williamson’s Message. It’s Ominous That We’re Only Getting It From Marianne Williamson, The Intercept, Jon Schwarz (5 August 2019)
* 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.”
** Marianne Williamson for the angels and other commentary, New York Post, (6 January 2020)
* 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.
** Marianne Williamson ends presidential bid, says campaign tried her faith, Religion News Service, (10 January 2020)
* She also invoked “A Course in Miracles,” an esoteric 1976 religious work that she spent much of her career teaching others about... Williamson has utilized religious and spiritual language on the campaign trail and talked about faith during her final campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, were she spoke at the Vote Common Good presidential forum organized by progressive people of faith.
** Marianne Williamson ends presidential bid, says campaign tried her faith, Religion News Service, (10 January 2020)
* 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.
** Satire- Stanford Occasionally officially endorses Marianne Williamson for president, The Stanford Daily, by Lana Tleimat (24 January 2020)

## See also

* Ageless Wisdom Teachings
* Karma

## External links

* Official web site
* Marianne Williamson, articles and shows at Oprah.com
* Marianne Williamson on "Politicking with Larry King" (25 October 2013)
* Sister Giant / 2016 — interviews by Williamson with progressive candidates for office
* That Famous Speech that Nelson Mandela NEVER Gave
* Authority control: WorldCat search