Matthew Fox Quotes

The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions.

I'm either going to have the career I want doing films, or I'll do something else - I'll be gone.

I put a lot of pressure on myself and I think I am quite ... well, intense about driving other people.

Political movements for justice are part of the fuller development of the cosmos, and nature is the matrix in which humans come to their self-awareness of their power to transform. Liberation movements are a fuller development of the cosmos's sense of harmony, balance, justice, and celebration. This is why true spiritual liberation demands rituals of cosmic celebrating and healing, which will in turn culminate in personal transformation and liberation.

I'm not really a tropical paradise kind of person.

I'm sorry, but I can't make a movie with the blonde from 'ER' who is starring in every single bad romantic comedy.

If you look closely at a tree you'll notice it's knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.

The prophets preach ... that pleasure, not will-power and coercion, is how you most deeply transform people.

We honor life when we work. The type of work is not important: the fact of work is. All work feeds the soul if it is honest and done to the best of our abilities and if it brings joy to others.

By cutting ourselves off from the rest of creation, we are left bereft of awe and wonder and therefore of reverence and gratitude. We violate our very beings, and we have nothing but trivia to teach our young.

Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there.

Human beings are midway between the size of a living cell and the size of Earth.

If you don't work on yourself, then much of your politics is merely projections. We have to walk our talk and do the inner work that allows the outer work to be authentic and also effective.

There is no end to the beauty for the person who is aware. Even the cracks between the sidewalk contain geometric patterns of amazing beauty.

The only way to learn compassion is through your heart; you have to back up and pass through your own pain.

God is voluptuous and delicious. - Meister Eckhart

I played football for a huge portion of my life, all the way through college actually.

I've always been into cars. Cars are part of our genetic makeup. It's unavoidable.

Creation is all things and us. It is us in relationship with all things. All things, the ones we see and the ones we do not; the whirling galaxies and the wild suns, the black holes and the microorganisms, the trees and the stars, the fish and the whales - the molten lava and the towering snow-capped mountains, the children we give birth to and their children, and theirs, and theirs, and theirs.

A civilization built on dualism and war within and between persons, one that puts its most creative minds and its best engineers to sadistic work building more and more destructive weapons, is no civilization at all. It needs a radical transformation from the heart outwards. It needs to outgrow and outlaw war just as in the last century it outlawed slavery. The human race has outgrown war, but it hardly knows it yet.

We must work on our souls, enlarging and expanding them. We do so by experiencing all of life-the beauty and the joy as well as the grief and pain. Soul work requires paying attention to life, to the laughter and the sorrow, the enlightening and the frightening, the inspiring and the silly.

I think you've got to take your time and make sure you're making choices that are smart for you.

What is common to all paths that are spiritual is, of course, the Spirit-breath, life energy, that is why all true paths are essentially one path, because there is only one Spirit, one breath, one life, one energy in the universe. It belongs to none of us and all of us. We all share it. Spiritually does not make up otherworldly; it renders us more fully alive.

I turn a lot of stuff down - big, big movies, the kind I wouldn't want to go to the cinema to see.

Awe is the beginning of wisdom. Awe is the beginning of education.

To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy. It is also to speak of our connecting to the Divine in us and of our bringing the Divine back to the community. This is true whether we understand our creativity to be begetting and nourishing our children, making music, doing theater, gardening, writing, teaching, running a business, painting, constructing houses, or sharing the healing arts of medicine and therapy.

I am a Westerner. We're not going to change the West by going East. The East has a lot to teach us, but essentially it's like a mirror, saying, hey, can't you see what's here in your own religion, what are you, stupid?

Pain destroys the illusions of false, that is, elitist pleasures. It burns from the inside out. It, therefore, sensitizes us to what is truly beautiful in life.

Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied, of getting in touch with the space inside and expanding this until it merges with the space outside. Space meeting space; empty pouring into empty. Births happen from that encounter with emptiness, nothingness ... Let us not fight emptiness and nothingness, but allow it to penetrate us even as we penetrate it.

Our self-expression is meant to be a manifestation of the silence of our hearts.

Animals teach us about the animals in ourselves. We need their spirits.

Work should be in order to live. We don't live in order to work. That shift in awareness is necessary.

I enjoy a four-seasonal climate and wide-open spaces, so being on an island 2,500 miles into the South Pacific made me feel a little claustrophobic.

Creativity and imagination are not frosting on a cake: They are integral to our sustainability. They are survival mechanisms. They are of the essence of who we are. They constitute our deepest empowerment.

I directed an episode of 'Party of Five' toward the very end of that show. It was a great experience.

The whole purpose of letting pain be pain is this: to let go of pain. By entering into it, we see that we are strong enough and capable enough to move through it. We find out that it ultimately has a gift for us.

Creation is all space, all time - all things past, present, and future.

A lot of the time I hate acting. It has a lot to do with the way I was brought up in a world where showing your emotions is frowned upon. It's just not manly. I don't do anything in life because I love doing it. It's because I want to be good at it.

To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people.

Only art as meditation reminds people so that they will never forget that the most beautiful thing a potter produces is...the potter.

A lot of people want to see this idealized version of heroism, all pretty and perfect, and I'm not interested in playing the goody-goody hero at all.

Creativity as Divine intimacy flows through us and is bigger than we are, urging us to go to the edge and grow larger. And our growth in turn delights God. "God is delighted to watch your soul enlarge," says Eckhart.

When our inner self connects to our work and our work to our inner self, the work knows no limit, for the inner self knows no limit.

When it comes to wilderness animals we have to make an effort to preserve what areas we can that they can be themselves in. Its come to a point though, clearly, where some species have to be cared for by humans if they are not going to disappear altogether.

Where does creativity come from?
Creativity comes from the Universe itself.
"There is music and poetry in the Universe itself - surely we hear it on planet earth." And Creativity comes from our joys and sorrows, our deep-hearted experiences. It also comes "from and in the heart of God. All our spiritual traditions the world over agree that creativity follows through the human heart and that it flows from the Divine Heart."
Creativity is seen as a spiritual, inwardly-driven activity, directly influenced by a Higher Power, or God. That is the ultimate in inspiration for me: to know I have "permission" to be creative and to be a creator too.

From suffering I have learned this: That whoever is sore wounded by love will never be made whole unless she embrace the very same love which wounded her. - Mechtild of Magdeburg

Any time I need to be really physical, and a role requires that, you're kind of viscerally activated by being that physical in it. It takes away the thought process, which is fun.

I think that there's a hidden darkness in all of us!

Do not confuse beauty with beautiful. Beautiful is a human judgment. Beauty is All. The difference is everything.

i hope i live to be 150

I'm really enjoying the process of learning to fly. How it will fit into my life down the road - I'm looking forward to discovering that.

Today's Catholic church seems to reward authoritarian personalities who are clearly ill, violent, sexually obsessed and unable to remember the past.

A job is something we do to get a paycheck and pay our bills. Jobs are legitimate, at times, but work is why we are here in the universe. Work and calling often go together.

I'm an actor. I try to play a character in a really cool story, the very best I can.

If you look at men's roles for the last thousand years, the desire is fundamental. We want to take care of, provide for, and be of service to ... women.

When the Sacred Masculine is combined with the sacred feminine inside each of us, we create the 'sacred marriage' of compassion and passion in ourselves.