Mark Juergensmeyer Quotes

When I came back I joined a black church in Oakland and that made me feel more at home, a bit like being connected to India. It felt funny to be around so many white people when I came back to the United States. It still bothers me. One of the things I liked living in Hawaii years later was the racial complexity of it. I remember that at the time when Sucheng and I got married--we met as graduate students at Berkeley and have been married almost forty years--one of the first houses we bought was in a Black neighborhood in west Berkeley and we didn't quite notice how uniformly Black it was until some weeks later. I said to Sucheng, "You know, we're the only white people in this neighborhood." And she looked at me and said: "Speak for yourself, honkie! ~ Mark Juergensmeyer

So my students sometimes say: "Everything you teach about religion you seem to like. You always say such positive things about Islam and such positive things about Judaism and Hinduism, which one do you believe?" And I say: "Which one do you think God believes?" [laughter] What the students say is true. I like all religions and I think religion is a natural expression of the higher aspirations of humanity just as it all too often is also an expression of the despotic and most base aspects of humanity. ~ Mark Juergensmeyer

The most intense skeptics and the most intense believers of our age share a common conviction: that beneath all superficial appearances lies a deeper truth. ~ Mark Juergensmeyer

Let's not pretend that all of a sudden, this is some new system. ~ Mark Shields

I have jumped out of airplanes but I was not technically a paratrooper. I was an infantryman and a night fighter, anti-terrorist. ~ Mark Helprin

There aren't going to be many easy nights at all. There are going to be a lot of people beating up on each other. The pitching of the White Sox and Twins is exceptional. ~ Mark Shapiro

Wait when waiting is called for. That's what Lundist used to tell me. But never hesitate ~ Mark Lawrence

I've always had an idealistic streak about storytelling in that I believe we owe more to audiences than repeatedly bludgeoning them over the head while stealing their lunch money. We owe them inspiration. That's why I'm more interested now in creating new heroes than hooking up jumper cables to old ones. ~ Mark Frost

No one can stop you from doing exactly what you want to do. If you can accept that the cavalry won't come, and if you can be the cavalry, it gives you a chance to be happy. ~ Mark Duplass

The Clinton presidency has at last stumbled on its rendezvous with history: While Ronald Reagan and George Bush presided over the fall of Communism, Mr. Clinton presides over the rise of Viagra. It may not be true that any young boy can grow up to be president. But at least, thanks to Viagra, any young boy can grow up to be this president. ~ Mark Steyn

At the risk of sounding sentimental, I've always felt there are people who can leave an indelible mark on your soul, an imprint that can never be erased. ~ Agent Broyles

This is the ongoing purpose of full attention: to find a thousand ways to be pierced into wholeness. ~ Mark Nepo

...If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

"The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? ~ Mark Twain

Every family struggles with different things, and everybody struggles with different things. ~ Mark Shriver

The network and local TV angle of broadcast television has received a black eye for not properly debating within the news issues that should be debated, instead of shuffling them of to television advertising. ~ Mark E. Hyman

Nature seems to have poured forth her riches so without calculation, merely to mark the fullness of her joy. ~ Margaret Fuller

Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment
where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels
this moment shows us that what is real is sacred ~ Mark Nepo

I hate this plan!" the surveyor was shouting. "The road was perfectly straight. This is a pimple in the face of my road!"
"Get out your equipment and mark us a perfect semicircle," said Arnando, cool as morning dew. "Make the best of it, you geometrical tyrant. ~ Rachel Hartman

What God lacks is convictions- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something- not try to be everything. ~ Mark Twain

have the neck of a thousand giraffes. ~ Mark Time

My dad was quite a forbidding figure. I realise now that that was mainly because he worked so hard. He wasn't unkind, but he was a presence. ~ Mark Gatiss

The words we speak to each other should leave stretch marks, not bruises. Love is always picky about what it says. ~ Bob Goff

The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort. ~ Mark Cuban

Action eradicates fear. No matter what you fear,
positive, self-affirming action can diminish or completely cancel that which you are fearful of. ~ Mark Victor Hansen

Part of my driving desire as a pastor is to remove every obstacle except the cross that would keep people from coming to faith in Christ. ~ Mark Batterson

When I was 14, I used to have a calendar on my wall, crossing the days off until I was 15, because the school leaving age was 15. Then three months before I turned 15 they changed the leaving age to 16. ~ Mark E. Smith

You cannot be the hands and feet of Jesus if you're sitting on your butt. ~ Mark Batterson

My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it. ~ Mark Haddon

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

Did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?'
'I certainly did think it.'
'Well, then, you may unthink it. ~ Mark Twain

I'll tell you what time it is. It is time to be a hero. ~ Mark Andrew Poe

I decided I wanted to be a musician when I saw the movie 'Amadeus' around 1987. I was five years old, so it was a good time to start piano lessons after seeing Tom Hulce who played Mozart play the harpsichord on his back with his hands crossed. Such a great movie to inspire a five-year-old. ~ Mark Salling

Okay, so, sometimes in life, I can be a score-keeper - someone who keeps track of what he gives and what he gets in return. An annoying quality, to say the least, and I'm sure my wife has your sympathy, but it's made me highly attuned to when and where credit is due. ~ Mark Feuerstein

Creed and opinion change with time, and their symbols perish; but Literature and its temples are sacred to all creeds and inviolate. ~ Mark Twain

And then one morning the soldiers grew suddenly still as the heavy latches were lifted and turned. Just before the doors slid apart, a man from Pisa took the opportunity to say, "The air is thin. We're in the mountains." Alessandro straightened his back and raised his head. The mountains, unpredictable in their power, were the heart of his recollection, and he knew that the Pisano was right. He had known it all along from the way the train took the many grades, from the metallic thunder of bridges over which they had run in the middle of the night, and from the white sound of streams falling and flowing in velocities that could have been imparted only by awesome mountainsides. ~ Mark Helprin

Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing ... Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all. ~ Mark Kingwell