I'm one of those big believers that the movie comes together in the way it's supposed to be and that movies are fated to become what they become.
In government, I'm a strong believer in the need for reform of government agencies and departments. They - they have gotten fat and sloppy, and they're not user friendly. They are inefficient. They cost too much.
Actors have a platform, especially during awards season. Which I respect. Everyone should speak out. Here's the thing: When it comes to using the platform, I'm a firm believer that when there's something that needs to be said, I'll say it.
I used to defend the West Wing show from the charge of sentimentality or wish-fulfilment, because I think if you do go into the Barack Obama White House you will find six or seven people around him who are true believers. We make these people climb this filthy rope and then we stand at the bottom and say, "Hey, your hands are dirty!" To show heroic, progressive, democratic politics at work was more than I ever expected.
Leadership belongs to all of us. I'm a big believer in John Maxwell, a leadership speaker and author, who talks about the 360-degree leader. Before leading others, you have to learn to lead yourself. Wherever you work in an organization you have to learn to lead up, lead down, and lead side to side. Leadership belongs to all of us. You have to see yourself, and believe in yourself in the way that we are talking about here to give to those that you lead.
I'm a believer that charisma makes a huge difference in people's decisions to follow you. However, it's not just that you say it well, but it's that you know it well. It helps if you can say it well enough that people want to follow you. Charisma isn't required, but it makes a big difference.
During the fast of Ramadan, our minds stayed on the worship of Allah and stayed on the remembrance of the great gift to humanity of the Qur'an must mean then that following that sacredness of the Qur'an should be our actions in accord with what the Qur'an and Allah demands of the believer especially during this Sacred Month.
It's fantastic to believe, because they get so many benefits. I get mad at the atheist community when they put down believers because they put down religion so much. Now I am an atheist, but I don't like to describe myself with that term. I prefer secular humanist. But I do see first hand how beneficial religion is, for example if you are a refugee getting in a boat to take you across the Mediterranean, a belief in God is an advantage. I completely understand that comfort.
The New York Times is filled with Ivy League graduates and so is the Washington Post. I mean, it's all the same club. They may be Ivy League educated, but they're not smart. Their minds are closed. They actually are mind-numbed robots. They have been programmed all their lives. They're not even thinkers. These are people who have been programmed to believe what they believe. They are committed believers, not thinkers.
Mandela didn't end Apartheid in South Africa, the poor guy was in jail for 27 years, it was the African people that ended it but he was a symbol of their struggle. Or Gandhi in India, Gandhi was a great believer in non-violence and he was in and out of jail, but India became free. I think it's better to look at what people can do collectively and that's why it's so important to encourage them.
Love is the language we as believers must speak. Galatians 3:26 says we are ALL children of God. The spirit of God is Love. I would be as bold as to say that if you are unable to love, you likely are not a Christian. I know that sounds harsh, but the word Christian comes from "little Christ," meaning we operate and behave with the same spirit as our Savior.
I'm a big believer in free speech. Common Sense's motto is sanity, not censorship. But I'm over the age of 18, and we can handle that, and you can, too. But I don't want that game marketed to an 11-year-old or a 12-year-old, and that's what's happened. And so there are extraordinary changes that should happen, first of all voluntarily by the industry, and, second, that kind of marketing and sales practice can be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission.
Many who are convinced that God is non-violent simply dismiss the Old Testament accounts of God commanding or engaging in violence. I don't consider this to be a viable option, for Jesus treats the whole Old Testament as the inspired Word of God. My cross-centered interpretation of these violent portraits allows believers to affirm that God is non-violent while also affirming that all Scripture is "God-breathed.".
The violent portraits of God in Scripture have become one of the biggest obstacles to believers coming to faith. When we can show how these portraits bear witness not to a violent God, but to the non-violent loving God revealed on Calvary, these obstacles to believing in the inspiration of Scripture become one of the most compelling reasons for believing in the inspiration of Scripture.
I'm a big believer in trying to challenge yourself to step outside of your comfort zone and try new things. I was petrified of sharks in the ocean so I got certified in scuba because I don't like settling for being afraid of things and being uncomfortable with things.
When we, believers, sing our songs of worship, not only do we praise God through them, but we preach to ourselves. As we sing the truth of who it is we're worshipping, as well as honoring God, it can be so helpful to us. Worship is about magnifying the right things. It can be so easy to let the struggles of this become all consuming, and we must not ignore them. But when we worship, instead of magnifying and focusing on those things, we magnify and focus on the name, the strength, the power, the grace of Jesus. When we do that, it puts everything into perspective.
I am a strong believer that modern political life must rediscover a sense for symbolism. We need to develop a kind of political heroism. I don't mean that I want to play the hero. But we need to be amenable once again to creating grand narratives.
I have a friend who lives in Los Angeles. In past conversations, we've discussed the differences between being a Christian in Nashville and being a Christian in L.A. In Nashville the question is not, "are you a believer?" The question is "where do you go to church?" My friend always used to tell me that if you decide to be a Christian in L.A., you have to be really serious about the decision you are making because you will be the minority. And Christianity is so exclusive. It's not popular to believe that there's only one way to Heaven.
Anyone attempting to live a Christian lifestyle will always be pressed towards settling for "nominal Christianity." For the believer who lives in the Bible Belt, it can become less about whether one is living his or her life in complete and total sold-out devotion to God, and more about where I'm going to lunch after church. If I live in an area where Christians are in the minority, there is the pressure to take a more a la carte approach to one's belief system. It's safer to take some of God's teachings and apply the parts we like but push aside that which seems too extreme or exclusive.
I'm often a firm believer in "the simpler the better" approach and it's evident in my guitar setup.
Once Steve Fuller said that there is this idea that your responsibility as an intellectual is just to speak the truth as you see it. But actually, you should be more appreciative of what needs to be said. I don't think that's ever an excuse to say something you don't believe is true - but sometimes the emphasis has to be different. Well, if I'm talking to an audience of hardline atheists, I'll be trying to unsettle them a bit more, whereas, if I'm speaking to an audience of believers, I'll be giving them more of the pros of atheism. It's about having a sensitivity to context.
The first generation of school reformers I talk about - nineteenth century education reformer Horace Mann, Catharine Beecher - they are true believers in their vision for public education. They have a missionary zeal. And this to me connects them a lot to folks today, whether it's education activist Campbell Brown or former D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. It's a righteous sense, a reform push that's driven by a strong belief in a particular set of solutions.
Intuitionists think that there are cases in which, say, some identity statement between real numbers is neither true nor false, even though we know that it cannot possibly be false. That is: We know that it cannot not be that a = b, say, but we cannot conclude that a = b. We can't, in general, move from not-not-p to p in intuitionistic logic. , I suggest that the believer in vague objects should say something similar. It can never be true that it is vague whether A is B. But that does not imply that there is always a fact of the matter whether A is B.
I'm a big believer in the collective unconscious. The idea that there is a deep connection between all of us that goes back to our ancestors and forward to the people who will come after us. It's essentially the job of the artist to anchor that nebulous space, and I think that's what a writer does: goes to that strange place and brings back these little trinkets. The unspoken experience percolated throughout the generations allows you to have knowledge of things you wouldn't know first hand.
Something that I wanted to do through the film is try to explore the roots of belief, because everything has to do with beliefs. When I studied the side of the rationalists and the skeptics, and the side of the believers and so-called psychics, I found out that both of them, no matter what they claim to do, behave in a very similar way. They only accepted what confirmed their previous positions, and tended to reject everything that put them at risk.
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