Tom Shadyac Quotes

Show business is part of a larger culture, a world-wide culture that must make up to the fact that the accumulation of things doesn't make a life necessary any happier or purposeful.

- Tom Shadyac

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.

- Tom Shadyac

Truth can be a matter of perspective, but I also think there's a truth that exists, that there are laws to the universe the way Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King believed.

- Tom Shadyac

My dad's half-Lebanese, my mom is full Lebanese. I'm three-quarters Lebanese. Irish-Lebanese.

- Tom Shadyac

Christ is in all, meaning that the divine spark is in all things.

- Tom Shadyac

Someone asked me the other day, 'What's the biggest influence on your filmmaking career?' And they started naming filmmakers. I went 'Naw, it's Jesus actually.'

- Tom Shadyac

I think true success is intrinsic... It's love. It's kindness. It's community.

- Tom Shadyac

The one thing that advances a society is not technology or so-called development; it's love - that one principle.

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

When you do something in a nonviolent way, people will die and there will be casualties. But you're taking a different point of view that has a power.

- Tom Shadyac

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.

- Tom Shadyac

I was taught in school that I have to look out for number one. That was against everything that I intuitively felt.

- Tom Shadyac

I was raised Catholic.

- Tom Shadyac

Our culture does not teach us this, but what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. If you cheat in Vegas, it comes right home with you. If you cheat in Vegas, you walk home as a cheater. You lie awake at a night a cheater. You cannot escape it.

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

You can't sow an apple seed and expect to get an avocado tree. The consequences of your life are sown in what you do and how you behave.

- Tom Shadyac

If I end up homeless and penniless because of a shift in my behavior about sharing what's come to me, bring it on.

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

I believe in unity, as opposed to division.

- Tom Shadyac

I believe our emotional tension can manifest itself physically.

- Tom Shadyac

Technology is not good, it's neutral.

- Tom Shadyac

We are what make up society.

- Tom Shadyac

Facing my own death brought an instant sense of clarity and purpose.

- Tom Shadyac

To me, 'Ace Ventura' is as scriptural and sacred as any movie I've ever done because it's childlike.

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

I think laughter is a sacred act.

- Tom Shadyac

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.

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

Communism didn't work because people weren't ready for it, it was corrupt, and because it squelched individualism.

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

Definition is the death of discovery.

- Tom Shadyac

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.

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

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

- Tom Shadyac

Hope is the belief we might get it done, and faith is the knowledge we will get it done.

- Tom Shadyac