Tom Shadyac's Quotes

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

Technology is not good, it's neutral.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

I believe in unity, as opposed to division.

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.

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.

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

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

We are what make up society.

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

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