Criss Jami Quotes - Page 3

The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.
Criss Jami
Psychobabble attempts to redefine the entire English language just to make a correct statement incorrect. Psychology is the study of why someone would try to do this.
Criss Jami
I feel as though whenever I create something, my Mr. Hyde wakes up in the middle of the night and starts thrashing it. I sometimes love it the next morning, but other times it is an abomination.
Criss Jami
If I were to vote, I would intentionally vote for the goofiest candidate. It is my theory that when the people can outwit the leader, the more respected their voices will be.
Criss Jami
It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.
Criss Jami
It is easier for one to take risks and to chase his dreams with a mindset that he has nothing to lose. In this lies the immense passion, the great advantage of avoiding a materialistic, pleasure-filled way of life.
Criss Jami
The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations.
Criss Jami
The study of Scripture I find to be quite like mastering an instrument. No one is so good that they cannot get any better; no one knows so much that they can know no more. A professional can spot an amateur or a lack of practice or experience a mile away. His technicality, his spiritual ear is razor-sharp. He is familiar with the common mistakes, the counter-arguments; and insofar as this, he can clearly distinguish the difference between honest critics of the Faith and mere fools who criticize that which they know nothing.
Criss Jami
Pure wisdom is the 'fruit of life' banal platitudes are the 'bane of existence'.
Criss Jami
Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.
Criss Jami
Know the word of God not in order that by doing so you might be saved; know it rather so that unlike the many you are not easily deceived. You may find that, evidently, a great many of the so-called novel ideas of the present were made without a clue that 'God', if you will, already laid profound discourse on or against them ages ago: no man has gone against God in such a way that God, from the beginning, did not already expect him to. Then, insofar as this, you will remain clear in that it is not at all that the Christian should be against newness; quite the opposite really - for a major point of Christianity is about one constantly being made new in Christ - it is only that many people are not actually bringing true newness to the table, and this is precisely because they do not first apply (or let alone even know) the wisdom of old.
Criss Jami
As for the belief that humanity is mostly good, Secular humanism, when in that alignment, always presumes the existence of a higher power, or some god-like influence on man. Because it then becomes the belief that people are generally good and should be protected from the wiles of religion, as though this dark, vague and ignorant force once fell from the heavens, latched onto the purer hearts and minds of men and women, and, in all its forms, controlled and polluted the whole of human history. He says, 'When we defeat religion, humanity will be free.' But, if he were duly consistent, if he were really at all as secular as he claims, he might as well admit to what is actually an underlying brand of nihilistic cynicism: 'When we defeat humans, humanity will be free.
Criss Jami
These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief.
Criss Jami
To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ.
Criss Jami
If you have to say or do something controversial, aim so that people will hate that they love it and not love that they hate it.
Criss Jami
Senses of humor define people, as factions, deeper rooted than religious or political opinions. When carrying out everyday tasks, opinions are rather easy to set aside, but those whom a person shares a sense of humor with are his closest friends. They are always there to make the biggest influence.
Criss Jami
When your only regret is if anyone thinks you regret anything - that is the definition of conviction.
Criss Jami
In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.
Criss Jami
Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Criss Jami
There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper...
Criss Jami
There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.
Criss Jami
Anger's like a battery that leaks acid right out of meAnd it starts from the heart 'til it reaches my outer me
Criss Jami
The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it.
Criss Jami
I would rather my descendants have greater abilities and a greater knowledge of the love of Christ than I do, much like standing on one's shoulders in order to get a clearer view of the valley.
Criss Jami
Love is one of those topics that plenty of people try to write about but not enough try to do.
Criss Jami
If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy.
Criss Jami
It's simple, it's not that simple; or life is simple, but the things in it are not. When a man does not understand it, he tends to inflate it. When he does, he tends to deflate it. In the end, neither images are fully accurate.
Criss Jami
Love begets wisdom, thus it is, as often misconceived, more than vain layers of tenderness; it is inherently rational and comprehensive of the problem within the problem: for instance, envy is one of the most excused sins in the media of political correctness. Those you find most attractive, or seem to have it all, are often some of the most insecure at heart, and that is because people assume that they do not need anything but defamation.
Criss Jami
Disasters work like alarm clocks to the world, hence God allows them. They are shouting, 'Wake up! Love! Pray!
Criss Jami
As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate.
Criss Jami
I'm always talking to God about whether or not he exists - that's how I know I'm a theist.
Criss Jami
Christians walk as strangers in the world: They are untamed. They are free. To persevere with love, yet untamed by man, is often what leaves that open space for divine revelation when God so wills.
Criss Jami
When we look for success, it should be for the sole purpose of boasting sincerely in Christ. There's no other reason for it. Success is only worth it when the more intense it gets for you, the more you find yourself bragging for his glory rather than your own.
Criss Jami
God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself.
Criss Jami
I'm convinced that most men don't know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man's atrocities, but wouldn't dream of imprisoning a mother for her son's crime?
Criss Jami
When a man has a gift in speaking the truth, brute aggression is no longer his security blanket for approval. He, on the contrary, spends most of his energy trying to tone it down because his very nature is already offensive enough.
Criss Jami
Vivid simplicity is the articulation, the nature of genius. Wisdom is greater than intelligence; intelligence is greater than philosobabble.
Criss Jami
We're very familiar with the idea that some things are so complex they're beyond our comprehension. This not only keeps us solving and experimenting but also distracted. Many things are really so simple we can't see them under our big noses.
Criss Jami
Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren't so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do.
Criss Jami
It always seems as though the definition of love will remain debatable by an opinionated world.
Criss Jami
Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness.
Criss Jami
I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.
Criss Jami
Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice.
Criss Jami
To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it.
Criss Jami
One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.
Criss Jami
If you use a philosophy education well, you can get your foot in the door of any industry you please. Industries are like the blossoms on a tree while philosophy is the trunk - it holds the tree together, but it often goes unnoticed.
Criss Jami
In essence I find that the foundation of modern conservatism is driven by a clinging to God in fear of the world, whereas the foundation of modern liberalism is a clinging to the world in fear of God; albeit, the true foundation should be one's clinging to God in fear of God.
Criss Jami
The best ideas will eat at you for days, maybe even weeks, until something, some incident, some impulse, triggers you to finally express them.
Criss Jami
It's not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about.
Criss Jami
There's more to logic than identifying logical fallacies.
Criss Jami
I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself God's enemy.
Criss Jami
I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.
Criss Jami
Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don't laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions.
Criss Jami
Telling an introvert to go to a party is like telling a saint to go to Hell.
Criss Jami
The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.
Criss Jami
I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.
Criss Jami
When you're socially awkward, you're isolated more than usual, and when you're isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more importantly, it has its permanent advantages.
Criss Jami
Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.
Criss Jami
Self-righteousness is much like a spiritual egocentricity. It constitutes a secular type of love that thrives under conditionality, one in which is only existent after an individual meets the adopted standards of the condemner; oppositely, unconditional love is a holy love.
Criss Jami
It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.
Criss Jami