Top 79 Quotes & Sayings by Tom Shadyac

I believe our emotional tension can manifest itself physically.

I think laughter is a sacred act.

Show business is part of a larger culture, a world-wide culture that must make up to the fact that the accumulation of things doesn't make a life necessary any happier or purposeful.

I was paid $8 or $9 million for 'Evan Almighty.' I didn't want that money.

One of the challenges of the church is to accept humanity for all it is.

I was taught in school that I have to look out for number one. That was against everything that I intuitively felt.

I don't see making films to entertain and making films to inform as separate things.

Hope is the belief we might get it done, and faith is the knowledge we will get it done.

The second we define someone as a Democrat or Republican, it creates a whole set of limitations.

I'm from the Madeleine L'Engle school. The more she delves into science, the more she knows there's a creator who's behind these amazing laws, these amazing events. The symmetry of nature, the structure and order of it.

I've been called crazy many times before.

Technology is not good, it's neutral.

When you do something in a nonviolent way, people will die and there will be casualties. But you're taking a different point of view that has a power.

The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.

I love Frank Capra. He believed in the goodness of people and one man's ability to fight and often triumph.

I don't want to be your hero. I want to be your brother. You know, I want to be your family member. I want to be your equal.

I've never been a Hollywood dropout.

As a culture, I think we need to redefine what it means to be happy.

I think true success is intrinsic... It's love. It's kindness. It's community.

Facing my own death brought an instant sense of clarity and purpose.

Communism didn't work because people weren't ready for it, it was corrupt, and because it squelched individualism.

If you look at the Bible as a whole, it's redemptive and beautiful, and it's God's love story to mankind.

There is no 'I.' That's an illusion we've got to get beyond.

There's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law that's evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs.

Christ is in all, meaning that the divine spark is in all things.

My dad's half-Lebanese, my mom is full Lebanese. I'm three-quarters Lebanese. Irish-Lebanese.

You send a message in everything you do. I'm always very conscious about what ideas and what energy I put out there.

If I end up homeless and penniless because of a shift in my behavior about sharing what's come to me, bring it on.

I hope people start to look at their lives as the most powerful, creative act they will ever offer this world.

We are what make up society.

The one thing that advances a society is not technology or so-called development; it's love - that one principle.

You can't sow an apple seed and expect to get an avocado tree. The consequences of your life are sown in what you do and how you behave.

Definition is the death of discovery.

Our culture does not teach us this, but what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. If you cheat in Vegas, it comes right home with you. If you cheat in Vegas, you walk home as a cheater. You lie awake at a night a cheater. You cannot escape it.

Truth can be a matter of perspective, but I also think there's a truth that exists, that there are laws to the universe the way Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King believed.

Nature is an incredible cooperative. When things operate outside of that cooperative, they die off. It's a very simple rule that nature operates under.

I believe in unity, as opposed to division.

Someone asked me the other day, 'What's the biggest influence on your filmmaking career?' And they started naming filmmakers. I went 'Naw, it's Jesus actually.'

To me, 'Ace Ventura' is as scriptural and sacred as any movie I've ever done because it's childlike.

What matters is who we are, not who we beat.

In movies you can shoot a guy 3,000 times and get a 'PG-13', but if you say the 'F' word twice it's automatically an 'R'. I'll let that be its own comment.

I don't consider anything I'm doing as generous. In the new model of the world, I hope people will consider whatever I'm doing as just normal.

The one thing that advances a society is not technology or so-called development; its love - that one principle.

We started by asking what’s wrong with the world, and we ended up discovering what’s right with it.

We're a young species; We're only 175,000 years old. On the evolutionary scale, life on this planet is 4 billion years old. We're 175,000 years old. So we're trying something out. Who wouldn't think it would be better to have the most stuff to take as much as you could? As we do that, we see why the moral prophets come along and say, don't even store into barns, right? It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. We've seen we plunder nature. We plunder our neighbor. We create enemies because we're against each other.

I am part of a divine essence. I don't have to become anything. I already am.

Theres one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law thats evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs.

Nature is very clear on this. In fact, there's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks everyday. Now this is a law that's evolved over billions of years and the law is this: nothing in nature takes more than it needs. A redwood tree doesn't take all of the soil's nutrients, just what it needs to grow. A lion doesn't kill every gazelle, just one. We have a term for something in the body when it takes more than its share. We call it cancer.

The bike accident caused me to start talking about spiritual truths. This accident - where I faced my own death - compelled me to talk about these truths and try to make a movie about them.

Love is not always about ‘everything’s fine’…love is about truth. Truth and love are one in the same. It doesn’t always come in a sweet little box with a bow on it.

When an individual changes in even a small way he immediately changes the world around him. And that concentric circle moves out and changes everything.

Nothing in nature takes more than what it needs

Our own economy tells us to take as much as we can get, right? Our own economy says, you're going to be the most successful graduate if you go into the business world and take as much you can get. That's not how nature works. Nature has a much simpler economy. Everything in nature takes what it needs. That's it. You don't see an oak tree gathering up all the resources. An oak tree takes what it needs to be the authentic oak tree it is.

Nature actually works through intense cooperation. There is competition in nature , but it thrives through cooperation. We don't teach this to our kids. It's actually a violent ideology. It's why kids go into school and bully each other and god forbid do things even worse. Cooperation will become the marching orders of the human species or we're not going to make it.

The solution begins with a deeper transformation that must occur in each of us. I AM isn’t as much about what you can do, as who you can be. And from that transformation of being, action will naturally follow.

Death is not the enemy. A life lived without love is the enemy.

You send a message in everything you do, Im always very conscious about what ideas and what energy I put out there.

Authenticity means to be the author of your own life.

The way I think we were living is an invention. The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.

Illnesses are often times a reflection of an emotional place that needs healing or attention.