John Shelby Spong Quotes

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hang-ups.

I have a cult-like following because I exemplify what it is to be a human being.

What the world need is people who have come alive.

The ideas are secondary to the primary premise of people's potential. I'm always in wonder and astonishment.

Remember, no matter what you background is and what your current circumstances are, you have the capacity to take action. This is one of the golden threads of humanity - we all have the power to act in a way that will improve the quality of our lives.

The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be.

I've always believed the world would be a better place if more people everywhere have a chance to shape their own future and realize their full potential. I think that is what life is about.

The best kind of politics is when you help people become their own best selves.

People are capable of great, great change during the span of one lifetime. And women even more than men.

For Zen, man is the goal; man is the end unto himself. God is not something above humanity, God is something hidden within humanity. Man is carrying God in himself as a potentiality.

It is through art that we will prevail and we will endure. It lives on after us and defines us as people.

If You Don’t Claim Your Humanity, You Will Become A Statistic.

I want to be remembered as a person who felt there was no limitation to what the human body and mind can do and be the inspiration to lead people to do things they never hoped to do.

The human spirit is extraordinary. If we give the 3 billion people who live in poverty the opportunity to change their lives, they will. For too long, we've looked at needing to "save" these people - with an emphasis on "these people" - rather than removing the constraints keeping them from solving their own problems.

You look on the Internet, and people are transforming themselves on a daily basis, and it's not a superficial thing, it's not a vain thing, and it's not an "I don't like the way I look" thing. It's people truly being creative. It's a way of making your mark and making a statement, and I love that. Beauty is making a statement in whichever way you choose to do so, and I think that's a beautiful thing.

After all, the only thing that is going to save mankind is if enough people live their lives for something or someone other than themselves.

In trying to express only those aspects of ourselves that we believe will guarantee us the acceptance of others, we suppress some of our most valuable and interesting features and sentence ourselves to a life of reenacting the same outworn scripts. Reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we have relegated to the shadow is the most reliable path to actualizing all of our human potential. Once befriended, our shadow becomes a divine map that—when properly read and followed—reconnects us to the life we were meant to live and the people we were meant to be.

We are not a problem people, we are people with problems.

People who wait for a magic wand fail to see that they ARE the magic wand.

When you invest in people and lift them toward their potential, they will love you for it.

Our experience over the last 20 years has shown that indeed people must themselves become their own liberators. You cannot wait for somebody else to come and rescue you.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.

As one of my predecessors said, our objective is not to take people to heaven, but to prevent humanity from going to hell.

...poor people are just as human as anyone else. They have just as much potential as anyone.

We have barely begun to tap into the genius of our humanity.