Marianne Williamson famous quotes
05-16-2025
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No one is any more or any less important than you are.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Once you reach a certain age, you're either slowly dying or slowly being reborn. I want to choose the latter.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I don't believe there are any powers, which in the larger sense, are unnatural or even supernatural. I think we just do not yet scientifically understand all of the powers inherent in the human consciousness, and the more attuned we are to the realm of spirit, the more our conscious mind is available to subconscious, spiritual prompting.
-- Marianne Williamson -
We cannot give what we do not have: We cannot bring peace to the world if we ourselves are not peaceful. We cannot bring love to the world if we ourselves are not loving. Our true gift to ourselves and others lies not in what we have but in who we are.
-- Marianne Williamson -
People want the nation to transform in the same way they want their own lives to transform. If you're interested in transforming your life, you can't just transform some things. You can't try to fix some things, but sweep other things under the rug because it's too hard to face them. And the same is true for a nation.
-- Marianne Williamson -
When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I think the greatest gift we can give our children is the experience of deep quiet. If we don't help our children cultivate contemplation, reflection, prayer, meditation, or whatever other practice of mindfulness, then they're likely to be completely spun out of their center by the time they're in grade school.
-- Marianne Williamson -
We can always choose to perceive things differently. You can focus on what's wrong in your life, or you can focus on what's right.
-- Marianne Williamson -
When we're in our right minds, we are hopeful. Because the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, nature does bend toward healing, and the heart does bend toward love.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The biggest problem is our lack of "response-ability." That's what happens when money rather than love is the bottom line. People act like idiots.
-- Marianne Williamson -
What's difficult in life is to stay centered when somebody does or says something that tempts us to close our hearts because their heart was closed. That is hard. But that is also how we grow. We go through those circumstances in order to evolve into people who can hold to our loving center no matter what the world throws us.
-- Marianne Williamson -
We need more than new policies. We need a new worldview, and a new bottom line. We need to replace economic values as our ordering principle, with humanitarian values as our ordering principle.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Each of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world.
-- Marianne Williamson -
There is simply too much unnecessary suffering in our world. And we should see that as a national security risk, by the way. Given enough time, desperate people will tend to do desperate things. At a certain point you won't be able to build enough prisons or enough bombs to eradicate the effects of all that violence inside so many hearts.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Forgiveness is the choice to see people as they are now. When we're mad at people, we're angry because of something they said or did before this moment. By letting go of the past, we make room for miracles to replace our grievances.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I don't think pain is a prerequisite for growth, but on the other hand, most of us choose very painful ways to learn.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.
-- Marianne Williamson -
It is absolutely a relationship with food that is a displaced relationship with God. And that displaced relationship with God takes two forms: our availability to other people and our availability to our own thoughts and feelings.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Forgiveness is key to enchanted love because it is key to living right, period. It is the capacity to see beyond the veil of personality and worldly illusions. No one is perfect or attractive every day. Forgiveness means we are capable of relating to someone on a deeper level than the ordinary self. And that we are committed to doing so no matter what the appearances are, no matter what the situation is.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Once we reach a certain age, we tend to recalibrate our expectations. We expect less from the world once we've seen it up close.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Think of the mystical three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection as the time it takes for a situation to change once spirit has infused our consciousness. As we come to look at an experience differently, in time in begins to transform.
-- Marianne Williamson -
‎"Nothing binds you except your thoughts; nothing limits you except your fear; and nothing controls you except your beliefs.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Something very beautiful happens to people when their world's fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.
-- Marianne Williamson -
It takes mystical insight to see the beauty and innocence in each other, even when that is not what we are showing to the world. That is why God is needed in intimate relationships, to move us beyond the perceptions that can so often poison love.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The goal of spiritual practice is full recovery, and the only thing you need to recover from is a fractured sense of self.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Only God's Thoughts - or love - is actually real. So when we separate ourselves from that love, we're actually not thinking at all: we're hallucinating.
-- Marianne Williamson -
In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The love is what's left at the end because it's the bedrock, fundamental reality that gets hidden all the time, but never really goes away.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Until we have met the monsters in ourselves, we keep trying to slay them in the outer world. And we find that we cannot. For all darkness in the world stems from darkness in the heart. And it is there that we must do our work.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Even a happy life has a sad day. We fail to provide a context which says it's okay to cry, it's okay to be sad. So I think making the space for suffering is so important and making space for this expression of feelings in community.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Every time we focus on someone else's darkness, we are blocking our own view of the light. We think the person we are involved with has attacked us or has withheld love from us, when they really haven't. We focus on their guilt instead of their innocence. Frequently people are just being themselves and we start projecting our own childhood dramas onto them, pushing away the very love we want so much.
-- Marianne Williamson -
We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.
-- Marianne Williamson -
In pursuing personal growth, there are issues where we can advance just so far by ourselves. At some point, our continued progress and improvement can only come about through relationships with others. Romantic love is an intense and intimate exposure to another person; if we can be who we want to be, even in that context, then our spiritual growth is exponentially expanded.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I am very much into politics, but what interests me is sacred principles applied to that area. I am interested in the intersection of the Spiritual and the political - how spiritual principles apply to the social and political issues of our day. For me, the spiritual realm, is a more powerful place to speak from on those issues.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Spiritual growth involves giving up the stories of your past so the universe can write a new one.
-- Marianne Williamson -
No matter what I write or speak about, it always has some connection to how our spiritual understanding impacts the world we live in. Whether I'm writing or teaching about nutrition, pilates, green living or meditation, all topics simmer down to self thought and intention.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Take a good look at your life right now. If you don't like something about it, close your eyes and imagine the life you want. Now allow yourself to focus your inner eye on the person you would be if you were living this preferred life. Notice the differences in how you behave and present yourself; allow yourself to spend several seconds breathing in the new image, expanding your energy into this...
-- Marianne Williamson -
My hope is that I'm getting better and wiser. With every book, I have more of myself to pour onto the page.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Sometimes when we're feeling sad, it's important just to feel the sadness. Like a snake shedding its skin, old feelings of remorse and regret and hurt and anger often have to come up in order to be released. On the other side we're a better person, capable of a happier life...who we are when we're no longer burdened by the buried feelings that weighed us down, or the self - defeating patterns that the pain produced.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Choosing joy involves spiritual surrender, and sometimes we would rather hold on to the pain than surrender our egos.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Just like a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun, and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean, we can't separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Great spiritual teachings do not change, but we do. As we grow older and wiser, we can receive the teachings at deeper levels.
-- Marianne Williamson -
It takes courage...to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I try to be self-disciplined with my thoughts. It's our thoughts that matter most, and all the rest falls into line behind that: if I remember who I really am and why I'm on the earth, then I more naturally want to treat my body like a temple and so forth.
-- Marianne Williamson -
As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.
-- Marianne Williamson -
In every moment we make a decision -- whether conscious or unconscious. Will I choose to open my heart, send love, withhold judgment and thus free myself from fear? Or will I close my heart, project fear instead of extending love, judge others, and thus bind myself to fear? The choice is mine and mine alone.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The fate of the world rests on this one thing: our capacity to actualize our spiritual potential, and quickly.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.
-- Marianne Williamson -
We need to take responsibility for the effect of our environment on our nervous systems, and particularly the nervous systems of our children. No wonder so many of them are diagnosed with all the stuff they're diagnosed with today. Modern technology is a blessing to be sure, but it's also a curse if we allow it to pull us out of our spiritual center. A 24 hour electronic onslaught comes at the expense of our deep humanity and our deepest relationships.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I deepen my experience of God through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness.
-- Marianne Williamson -
If you have a longing in your heart to hear a deeper truth, there's a mysterious way in which that truth will find you.
-- Marianne Williamson -
If I choose to bless another person, I will always end up feeling more blessed.
-- Marianne Williamson -
A primary goal of the spiritual life is to learn to quiet the mind through prayer and meditation, through spiritual practice, so that we can hear what in both Judaism and Christianity, is called the small, still voice within.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Ego says, "Once everything falls into place, I'll feel peace". Spirit says, "Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place".
-- Marianne Williamson -
If you're getting your guidance about who you are and what to do with your life only from the external world, then by definition you'll be led away from your authentic truth. Your authentic truth isn't in the material world. It's counterintuitive, but you have more power in the world when you know you're not of it.
-- Marianne Williamson -
We were all born carrying a promise -- a promise to make the world better -- and there's a yearning to make good on that promise that none of us can suppress forever.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I can't say that there are "things" that make me come alive. There are thoughts that make me come alive.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Karma means that all actions have consequences. Grace means that in a moment of atonement -taking responsibility, making amends, asking for forgiveness - all karma is burned.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I write and speak about personal and spiritual growth. One week I write about illness and another week I speak about relationships and another week I write about work and money and another week I speak to people with obesity issues. I write about whatever wounds seem to cry out for more enlightened solutions, and the love that heals them all.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Trying to suppress or eradicate symptoms on the physical level can be extremely important, but there's more to healing than that; dealing with psychological, emotional and spiritual issues involved in treating sickness is equally important.
-- Marianne Williamson -
When it comes to politics, we have an internal glass ceiling. We stand as good a chance as a man to win a political race, but women don't want to run at the same rate as men do. People point to the work-family balance issue, but I think it's much more than that. Many women don't have children, or have children who are no longer at home. There are some deeper psychological and emotional issues in play, like the fact that many of us feel like the embarrassment, humiliation and personal demonization in politics are simply more than our hearts can take. What stops us is fear.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The more room you give yourself to express your true thoughts and feelings, the more room there is for your wisdom to emerge.
-- Marianne Williamson -
A lot of us simply disengaged from politics altogether, but then we woke up and went wow, wait a minute. Why does that insane conversation get to dominate? Who made those people the creators of the conversation? And how can we start a new one?
-- Marianne Williamson -
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Sometimes when everything has totally apart, the meaningless preoccupations that so often dominate our lives simply fall away. And what is left is who we really are, and who we really are is compassionate and intelligent and wise.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The choice to be used as an instrument of love, right here, right now, is a choice for personal empowerment.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Sometimes, when I'm sitting with people who have been stripped of everything and who are naked and authentic and finding themselves for the first time, I am reminded of how good people really are.
-- Marianne Williamson -
When we are centered in joy, we attain our wisdom.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I'm haunted sometimes by the thought, what if we lived from that place all the time? What if we went there without tragedy striking first? The very thought of who we would be together, and the kinds of collectives decisions we would make. The kind of world we'd create makes me want to cry sometimes.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The only work that will ultimately bring any good to any of us is the work of contributing to the healing of the world.
-- Marianne Williamson -
You have tremendous gifts to give; God sent them with you when you came to this earth. And while you might forget them, or doubt they exist, God does not forget and He will show them to you. As soon as your gifts are dedicated to His work, they will blossom. Chains that might have held you back for years will dissolve. And you will feel free. You will learn that your spirit is bigger than your circumstances, as soon as you put your spirit first.
-- Marianne Williamson -
17,000 children starve on this planet every single day. That fact alone should blow any conscious person out of their chair. You know, my mother used to say that a woman's most important job is taking care of her children and her home. I laughed at that when I was younger, but I don't laugh at it anymore. I just realize that every child on the planet is one of our children, and the earth itself is our home.
-- Marianne Williamson -
You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.
-- Marianne Williamson -
When women think of power, we shouldn't think of it only for ourselves. We should be thinking about what we're going to do with power, once we have it. Women should be standing up powerfully and passionately for the care and protection of children, as well as the care and protection of the Earth itself. Women's voices should be front and center in protecting both our young and our habitat. That's the way it is in any species that survives.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Dear God, Please send to me the spirit of Your peace. Then send, dear Lord, the spirit of peace from me to all the world. Amen.
-- Marianne Williamson -
People don't usually come see me because things are going well.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Meaning doesn't lie in things. Meaning lies in us. When we attach value to things that aren't love - the money, the car, the house, the prestige - we are loving things that can't love us back. We are searching for meaning in the meaningless. Money, of itself, means nothing. Material things, of themselves, mean nothing. It's not that they're bad. It's that they're nothing. ("A Return to Love")
-- Marianne Williamson -
Society never progresses because the majority one day wakes up and says, "Let's do things differently." The majority didn't wake up and say, "Oh, let's just free the slaves." Society always progressed because a relatively small group of people usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their time had a better idea and articulated another way. That's simply how evolution works; it's the mutation. The member of the species who does things differently - that points the way to the future because they're better adapted for survival.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Once the light of our awareness is cast on any darkness, then it cannot hide and it cannot remain. Such is the law of consciousness.
-- Marianne Williamson -
There is a perverse comfort zone to living a small life. For women, that zone has to do with the fact that we're less likely to be challenged, we're less likely to be criticized, we're less likely to be called angry or strident, if we simply go along and acquiesce to the prevailing patterns of thought and behavior.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Our triumph over sorrow is not that we can avoid it but that we can endure it. And therein lies our hope; that in spirit we might become bigger than the problems we face.
-- Marianne Williamson -
To bear witness to all the unnecessary suffering on the planet and make ourselves available to service - whatever that means for each of us. We go deep in our personal relationships in America, but we need to go deep in our public relationships as well.
-- Marianne Williamson -
People hear you on the level you speak to them from. Speak from your heart, and they will hear with theirs.
-- Marianne Williamson -
We already have the material means to eradicate deep poverty and thereby eradicate hunger. We have the material means to begin the tremendous clean up of the environmental messes we've created. We have, I believe, the psychological, emotional and spiritual means to create a world without war. We have the material means to create a world in which unnecessary human suffering has been drastically diminished. My vision for the future is that we do those things. And I think we will.
-- Marianne Williamson -
A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The real axis of social change is not horizontal, but vertical. We don't need a whole bunch of people gathering to think shallow thoughts together. What we need is for as many people as are ready to gather and think deep thoughts together.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Within the miraculous brew of universal creativity , all you desire already exists. Spend five minutes each morning with your eyes closed, living in that dimension. Allow images to unfold without censor. Feel yourself living the most magnificent life -- a life of joy, creativity and love -- as you grow inwardly into the person you need to be in order to manifest it effortlessly.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Our problem isn't that the universe isn't on our side; the problem is that too many of us numb these days, not awake to the game, or to the power of the universe that flows through our psychic veins. Some of us need to stop whining. It's not like we're the first generation who faced serious challenges. But others rose to the occasion, and we need to too.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The universe is already programmed to give each of us a year of happiness. Our challenge lies in programming ourselves to receive it.
-- Marianne Williamson -
I think future generations will see the invention of the Internet as having been as important as the invention of the printing press. It's the democratizing tool of all tools. As long as no one can control the flow of information, then freedom always has a chance.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
-- Marianne Williamson -
Once the Western mind was disconnected from its sense of divine responsibility and genuine reverence towards nature, all hell broke loose. And that's where we are.
-- Marianne Williamson -
If a train doesn't stop at your station, then it's not your train.
-- Marianne Williamson -
The first step in forgiveness is the willingness to forgive.
-- Marianne Williamson -
A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passer her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.
-- Marianne Williamson
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