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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The prophets, who were very many, proclaim and declare the one God; for, being filled with the inspiration of the one God, they predicted things to come, with agreeing and harmonious voice.
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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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The right to communicate is a basic human right, and I believe that putting that on every national agenda is very important.
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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 had a very colorless background, and when I left Ohio and moved to England, nobody knew who I was and I had a real freedom. I could be free to experiment and experience things and I liked that a lot.
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The reduction of the universe to the compass of a single being, and the extension of a single being until it reaches God - that is love. Love is the salute of the angels to the stars. How sad is the heart when rendered sad by love! How great is the void created by the absence of the being who alone fills the world.
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I loved killing zombies in 'Day of the Dead.' I basically welcome anything that involves being dirty or bloody or shooting guns.
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Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious.
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'Bum's Rush' is a piece about timing, and everything that's in the piece needs to be with the piece. If people are missing, or marking, or unable to use their voices, the impulses that prompt the action are lost, and its logic crumbles.
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I believe that God is very real.
