Tom Shadyac

I've never been a Hollywood dropout.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.'

I believe in unity, as opposed to division.

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.

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

Definition is the death of discovery.

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.

Technology is not good, it's neutral.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.