John Quotes

Scrutamini scripturas (Let us look at the scriptures). These two words have undone the world.

Every law is a contract between the king and the people and therefore to be kept.

Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman. I don't think it is the role of the state to define what marriage is.

Of private differences personal to himself, my brother had none.

I make photographs and still make photographs of the natural environment. It's a love because that was part of my life before I was involved in photography.

I find the surface of a photograph a thing of beauty in and of itself, and it is this surface that makes a photograph unique relative to other two-dimensional media.

He was a very generous soul and was exceptionally dedicated to the medium of photography.

We all start in this medium because of the magic and the challenge is to keep it going.

In my mind I needed a symbol of today's technology, and I realized that what I wanted to photograph was the Space Shuttle. And so that's where Places of Power came into being.

In 1979, I received a phone call from Ansel Adams asking me if I would be willing to consider coming to work for him. I was teaching photography in Southern California at that point.

Many photographers are consumed with the idea of making beautiful contact sheets. I am far more interested in making the best final print I can.

I've never seen a surface that I think is more seductive in image making.

The reason I do workshops is so I can learn, and I am fortunate that I've probably gained more from the whole experience of teaching than any one participant has. It is all about asking.

The first day at the power plant I found myself photographing some steam vents on the roof of the structure. And I remember consciously thinking that they were just like trees but they were metal.

As I think all Americans understand on both sides of the aisle, the Social Security system as it is structured today is a pay-as-you-go system.

I apologize for the insensitivity of my remarks with respect to the mayor or his family, however I think it is important to note that this decision involves potential risk to innocent people.

In the twentieth century the number of people killed by their own governments under authoritarian regimes is four times the number killed in all this century's wars combined.

Love is the salt of life.

We like the gift when we the giver prize.

I think the worst way to go is to have somebody think they speak for God. If you look at history, every nation that has operated as if it spoke for God has become violently destructive.

The way you become divine is to become wholly human

The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church.

I've never known about anyone being helped by being told how wretched, miserable, sinful, and evil they are.

I'm not writing for fundamentalists. I'm writing for the people who have been repelled by that kind of thinking and yet who think there might be something they haven't yet discovered.

I experience God as the power of love.

The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

Live life to it's fullest, love wastefully, and be all we can be.

Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. I don't think that's the case.

Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Prayer is not adult letters written to Santa Claus, and God is not some parent-like figure up in the sky who's going to take care of us.

I know Jerry [Falwell] fairly well, and he's probably not bright enough to recognize all of the implications of what he said.

When I look back at the Christian faith, I see that we have had to retranslate, almost reinvent ourselves a number of times.

I've never met anybody who was helped by being told how wretched, miserable and sinful they are.

There's an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance.

I still hope. I wouldn't be in this position if I didn't. I love the church. I love the Bible. But I think we're in a time where we're desperately in need of a great reformation.

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God.

Benedict XVI kept saying that homosexuals are deviant. They're not deviant. They're deviant only if you say that anyone who is different from me is abnormal.

It's just not easy enough to say that I pray and God will accomplish.

Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history.

The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history.

I believe that God is very real.

Religion is a mixed blessing.

I don't make that decision [what next book will be] until I've read enough to know that I've got something different to say and I know how to say it.

There are some great values in Christianity, but I think the values are located more deeply in our humanity than they are in our religion. There are certainly some survival values.

If you want to be a Roman Catholic scholar and write, you've got to write in such a way that nobody understands what you're saying, and then you're thought to be profound.

We're either going to be driven to a whole new sense of radical interdependence where we are, in the Bible's words, our neighbor's keeper, or destroy ourselves.

In fact, in 1724 the Western world learned that women were co-creators of life that's when it was discovered that women had an egg cell.

The thing that intrigues me about Matthew is that I don't believe anybody would read it if they aren't Jewish and understand it. And so to say that publicly as a Christian is kind of interesting.

We have a democracy within the bounds of a constitution which provides certain guarantees related to the basic humanity of every person. I think that's the best way to go.

So much organized religion, in my opinion, ends up being life-denying.