John Shelby Spong Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way.
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I think that's what art is about: to provoke you. It helps me make sense of a senseless universe because I become the god of the story. I create it, and I see it in all its lineaments in my own way and can control it – in a world in which everything else is out of control.
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There's a kind of optimism specifically within Christianity about the world - about whose side God is on. Well, I didn't have any of that in my background. I had physicality and chaos.
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The Cause of God is not a theatrical display that is presented every hour, of which some new diversion may be asked for every day. If it were thus, the Cause of God would become mere child's play.
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We should not have a petty regard for God's gifts, though we may and should despise our own imperfections.
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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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Just personally, I've been attached to 'On the Road' since 2007 and it was the greatest thing in my life when I got cast in it. I couldn't believe it. When I was 17 and read the book, I looked it up on IMDb and it said that Francis Ford Coppola was going to direct it.
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It's amazing to think how powerful of a force optimism and hope can be. It's the thing that saves me. I believed that I lived in the greatest country in the world. I still believe that, and consequently, I believed that I had a chance, even though things around me were absolutely crazy and difficult.
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It's amazing what you'll discover if you start exploring what God has placed within you.
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I'm a great believer in chaos. I don't believe that you start with a formula and then you fulfill the formula. Chaos is a much better instigator, because we live in chaos - we don't live in a rigorous form.
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I do not believe wealthy candidates should spend vast resources in their own campaigns.
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I've never had an issue with studios. I believe in them as true creative partners in the process.
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I really believe that carpet-bombing, bombing civilian populations, is a form of terror - it's state terror as opposed to vigilante terrorism.
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Republicans believe largely in the market working, Democrats believe stereotypically that you've got to give people something. So why not give people a chance to let the market work for them.
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Dictators are ludicrous characters, and, you know, in my career and in my life, I've always enjoyed sort of inhabiting these ludicrous, larger-than-life characters that somehow exist in the real world.
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The more you believe in yourself, the faster you're going to get.
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I'll be excited when I get my heart broken properly for the first time. I'll be like, 'Thank God I've experienced something. Someone wanted to kiss me.' That's when it's going to be interesting: When you break up, they're taking a piece with them.
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Success will be when I can have a real swimming pool instead of the fifty-dollar one I buy at Kmart every year. But I don't want to get robbed of any authenticity to try and make money.
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V. S. Pritchett was one of the most admired, fun, talked-about writers of the 20th century: he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his work with prose. He was born in 1900, wrote till he died in 1997, and has been tidily forgotten ever since. This is a real shame.
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I've reached a point in my life where it's the little things that matter... I was always a rebel and probably could have got much farther had I changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I got pretty far without changing attitudes. I'm happier with that.
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I don't think that sleeping with one of the owners gives you the advantages people think it does.
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As time goes on, I realize more and more that, beginning in the early 30's, David Smith began setting the precedent for what was to come later for many of us.
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Sometimes it is claimed by those who argue that race is just a social construct that the human genome project shows that because people share roughly 99% of their genes in common, that there are no races. This is silly.
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I believe that God is very real.
