Tom Shadyac Quotes

I've been called crazy many times before.

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

Nothing in nature takes more than what it needs

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

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 sad fact is that we would rather be distracted than disturbed. But

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

And so we have come full circle, and return to the essential question: who are you? From a scientific perspective, you are miraculous. You are stardust. You contain the same energy and matter that created the universe 13 billion years ago. You were once that energy - inside the infinitesimally small point of light that began all of life. Everything around you, everything you can see, touch, and taste, is made of this matter, this same universal energy: the water that shines, the tree that reaches, the bird in flight, the grass that grows. The saints and sages across the ages said it this way: you are brothers and sisters with all of creation. If who you are and how things work are one and the same, then who you are is love.

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

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.

The mystics will tell you death is perfectly safe. A violent act will beget a violent act; it is simply a law.

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.

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

Technology is not good, it's neutral.

I believe our emotional tension can manifest itself physically.

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

If we exchange bombs for bread there will be less reason for wanting to kill us. I just want to have the conversation.

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

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.

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

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 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.

Authenticity means to be the author of your own life.

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

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

We are what make up society.

TRUTH: When a child believes he must win to be worthy, when young adults define themselves by what they do and not who they are, it is a kind of slavery a slave master would envy.

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 come from a family of lawyers. I was expected to be a professional of some sort, not an artist. I was never uplifted for my art.

Look at native cultures - they've lasted for tens of thousands of years, not doing everything right. We wouldn't want to emulate them in many ways, but their basic philosophies - being a part of nature, a part of a tribe or group without elevating, not what you call dominator philosophies - they lasted for tens of thousands of years. It took us to come and put them asunder.

I've never been a Hollywood dropout.

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 was raised Catholic and didn't like the dogma and exclusivity of that teaching but I was moved by the moral teachings and by the power of the Jesus fellow.

A redwood tree doesn't take all of the soil's nutrients; it just takes what it needs to grow. A lion doesn't kill every gazelle, it just kills one. In fact, when the lion has fed, gazelles will go on grazing right in the lion's midst. Why? Certainly, the lion could pounce again, but it doesn't. Somehow, the lion naturally obeys this life-giving law of limits, a law that keeps nature in balance and keeps the delicate cycle upon which all of life depends intact.

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.

Fear represents our need to hang on to the riverbank, to control outcomes, results, our lives; it swims upstream. Truth is about releasing that hold, letting go of results, and trusting the direction of Life's current.

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

What is it the child knows about happiness, passion, and play, that the adult forgets? Eastern

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

I believe in unity, as opposed to division.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Definition is the death of discovery.

I didn't want to hear the usual answers about what's wrong because I believe these are symptoms: global warming, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, environmental crisis. If we can identify the root cause, we can change our ways.

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.

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 wasn't big in the party scene but I did have an excessive lifestyle. I had much more than I needed. I think that was a manifestation of a certain kind of mental illness.

TRUTH: Worry has little to do with waking up. It has little to do with anything of value. Yes, entire industries have been created in homage to worry: auto insurance, health insurance, life insurance, 401(k)s, retirement accounts. But do you not see what all of this is? It is making yourself sick in order to lay up something for a sick day. It is you, Fear, trying to control what cannot be controlled. And what is it you want to control so desperately?