You send a message in everything you do. I'm always very conscious about what ideas and what energy I put out there.
— Tom Shadyac
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'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.
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.'
If I end up homeless and penniless because of a shift in my behavior about sharing what's come to me, bring it on.
The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.
The one thing that advances a society is not technology or so-called development; it's love - that one principle.
I hope people start to look at their lives as the most powerful, creative act they will ever offer this world.
I believe our emotional tension can manifest itself physically.
I was paid $8 or $9 million for 'Evan Almighty.' I didn't want that money.
I think true success is intrinsic... It's love. It's kindness. It's community.
Christ is in all, meaning that the divine spark is in all things.
I think laughter is a sacred act.
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.
I don't see making films to entertain and making films to inform as separate things.
Definition is the death of discovery.
I was raised Catholic.
I've never been a Hollywood dropout.
Communism didn't work because people weren't ready for it, it was corrupt, and because it squelched individualism.
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.
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.
We are what make up society.
My dad's half-Lebanese, my mom is full Lebanese. I'm three-quarters Lebanese. Irish-Lebanese.
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.
Facing my own death brought an instant sense of clarity and purpose.
If you look at the Bible as a whole, it's redemptive and beautiful, and it's God's love story to mankind.
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.
Technology is not good, it's neutral.
The second we define someone as a Democrat or Republican, it creates a whole set of limitations.
I believe in unity, as opposed to division.
To me, 'Ace Ventura' is as scriptural and sacred as any movie I've ever done because it's childlike.
As a culture, I think we need to redefine what it means to be happy.
There is no 'I.' That's an illusion we've got to get beyond.
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.
I was taught in school that I have to look out for number one. That was against everything that I intuitively felt.
I've been called crazy many times before.
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.
I love Frank Capra. He believed in the goodness of people and one man's ability to fight and often triumph.
One of the challenges of the church is to accept humanity for all it is.
Hope is the belief we might get it done, and faith is the knowledge we will get it done.
