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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The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.
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There are interests by the sacrifice of which peace is too dearly purchased. One should never be at peace to the shame of his own soul--to the violation of his integrity or of his allegiance to God.
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I'm not going to just fade out, I know.
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I did go to a film school in Sarajevo. I studied film and theatre directing. There was a war raging in the country while I was studying, and we did not have neither electricity nor cinemas for three and a half years.
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Sometimes you just have to let go of the old and trust that something better is going to take its place, even if it's scary to face change and the unknown.
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I believe that God is very real.
