Criss Jami Quotes - Page 5

It is sometimes but the mere hope for enjoyment that allows one to enjoy something, even when he is not really enjoying it at the moment.
Criss Jami
Even though artists of all kinds claim to put their hearts and souls into their works, it will only confuse you, for example, if you try to discern a painter by his paintings. His masterpiece may be the master because of its iridescence; it may display a hundred different perspectives through his single face.
Criss Jami
Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different.
Criss Jami
I will admit that we as young rebels always wanted fundamentalists to understand our take on their religion, but rarely, if ever, the other way around. The fundamentalists are the real artists. If you saw only a masterpiece of an original painting and someone threw a splash of red across it saying that their version is better, you would be offended too.
Criss Jami
Pseudo-artists think that being an artist means opposing whatever seems to be an establishment. That is not creative at all. True creativity is the ability to gain perspective wherever you may have missed it before.
Criss Jami
One who enjoys finding errors will then start creating errors to find.
Criss Jami
I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth by taking it a step further.
Criss Jami
Fashion is simply a guideline for style-less people to appear stylish.
Criss Jami
Whether you try too hard to fit in or you try too hard to stand out, it is of equal consequence: you exhaust your significance.
Criss Jami
It turns out that indecision is a path itself; but figuratively, a vertical path - up or down - meaning it isn't always a fruitless path. One is forgotten, but the other is glorified. To be what they call 'middle-of-the-road' in most cases just means you have a hard time figuring out who between options is dumber. So quite often those who refused to decide were, after all, the bold individuals, the influential ones, the creative ones, those who snatched their own authority.
Criss Jami
I would rather be an artist than a leader. Ironically, a leader has to follow the rules.
Criss Jami
Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe.
Criss Jami
When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.
Criss Jami
Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities.
Criss Jami
The most fragile, unhappy people destine themselves to live lives of constantly reminding themselves to be happy.
Criss Jami
The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that 'this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point'; over the alternative and the one he denies, 'God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.' The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one's inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, 'the logical one', the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself - I do not think it wise to be angry at math.
Criss Jami
The factory of love encompasses all, but on some days, does it seem to be one of suffocation, squeezing its target too tightly? And on other days not tight enough? Or maybe that is the breath of a living love knowing when to protect, when to release, and when to protect again. For we are the products of an active love - the Father the creator, the Son the perfecter, the Spirit the supervisor - but just like in a factory, to deny the process is to ultimately create a defect of oneself.
Criss Jami
When everyone believes they are the life coaches, who are the players?
Criss Jami
What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch.
Criss Jami
Astray from a deep sleep chronic as I write by phonics, like insomnia I will always live the onyx night for revealing, and, upon it, still I'll steal the bright light of day right away just to keep building at speeds hypersonic.
Criss Jami
Hopefully, when your actions and deeds - and therefore other people - boast for you, you're made tired of hearing it, too, from your own mouth because if not, all could lose sight of those actions and deeds behind the gong of your boasting.
Criss Jami
It is ironic that constructive thinkers are often misunderstood as negative, as they differ from those longing for positivity: constructive thinkers have been conditioned to find positive in negative rather than suffering from the negative in negative. Or as Paul the Apostle wrote, 'I have learned the secret to contentment in any and every circumstance.' He was right. Indeed the Lord is our strength, especially under the commandment to love one another. Otherwise we are nothing and easily thrown about by both our own and other people's mind control in a painful, mental, physical desperation to run from every thought, every thing, and every one not seeming so positive or immediately beneficial to us.
Criss Jami
The most important part of discernment is pinpointing the forces to be reckoned with, both the constructive and destructive.
Criss Jami
The hard part about one being tough yet meek is the illusion of being a punching bag.
Criss Jami
I'm not offended until you think I'm offended.
Criss Jami
I have a thing for things that last.
Criss Jami
Look for the person everyone hates, and love them.
Criss Jami
To be acceptable is for one to ignore his weakness while knowing his strength, to cover the scar even though it's always there, however, to be impossible is for one to see his weakness as, not an adversary, but the cherry on top of his strength, to rearrange the scar so that it compliments his features.
Criss Jami
The crazy creatives are the creatives who never go completely mad. They aren't so easily disheartened by the seemingly endless amounts of scrutiny that creative individuals tend to receive because they, like insanity, are the ones who feed off of opposition and negative feedback and manage to continue along with a healthy ambition. It is the crazy that teaches us to use our gifts wisely and own all the attackers.
Criss Jami
The self-centered man will always expect nothing but praise. He will hope and expect all incoming criticism to be mere self-projection from the critic because when you're self-centered, self-projection is all you can imagine one can do.
Criss Jami
The hardest thing for a sane person to do is not care what anyone thinks, although everyone swears by it, hence our glorification of insanity.
Criss Jami
God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they're so empirically familiar with how atheists think.
Criss Jami
To swear day and night by media slander will make one a bigger victim than the slandered. It doesn't take much to begin to fear a mere illusion of human badness.
Criss Jami
Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied.
Criss Jami
Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: 'I must stop him before he stops me.' In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful.
Criss Jami
Pride is born as a mountaintop on a valley, but dies as an abyss in which it is too deep and too dark to see the better.
Criss Jami
The hardest chore to do, and to do right, is to think. Why do you think the common man would choose labor, partially, as a distraction from his own thoughts? It is because that level of stress, he most absolutely abhors.
Criss Jami
Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie.
Criss Jami
One either cares what others think about him, or cares what others think he thinks about them. If you want to find someone who doesn't care in the slightest what anyone thinks, try a lunatic asylum.
Criss Jami
Few endeavors, if any at all, I find to be inherently mature or inherently immature. Maturity is neither defined by one's particular preferences nor by one's particular activities; rather, it is defined by the strength of one's character.
Criss Jami
As cliché as it might sound, I'd rather lose than win by cheating. The latter is a much deeper, more personal loss in that one is admittedly whispering to himself his lack of competence. His cheating then begets more cheating, as he is ever-privately, ever-subconsciously insulting himself; thus, gradually deteriorating any remaining confidence.
Criss Jami
Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision.
Criss Jami
The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation.
Criss Jami
When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.
Criss Jami
When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie.
Criss Jami
Oftentimes in a society when people of a certain type, whether individual or a group, are subconsciously portrayed by the media as abnormal, they also slowly, subconsciously become enemies of that society due to feelings of cultural guilt. Ultimately by this the inflated media is an enemy of its very own cause.
Criss Jami
Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media.
Criss Jami
Society tells me to follow my own truth, but I don't let society tell me what to do. If you need someone to tell you that, chances are you're part of the crowd that will move on to the next fashion that comes around.
Criss Jami
It is the nature of physics to hear the loudest of mouths over the most comprehensive ones.
Criss Jami
A thief is one who insists on sharing his victimhood.
Criss Jami
The foundation of morality on the human sentiments of what is acceptable behavior versus repulsive behavior has always made morals susceptible to change. Much of what was repulsive 100 years ago is normal today, and - although it may be a slippery slope - what is repulsive today is possible to be normal 100 years into tomorrow; the human standard has always been but to push the envelope. In this way, all generations are linked, and one can only hope that every extremist, self-proclaimed progressive is considering this ultimate 'Utopia' to which his kindness will lead at the end of the chain.
Criss Jami
In a society where dirt sells, for every good story told as it is, you will hear the whole of that day's 10 bad stories sensationalized; although in reality, it could be that 100 good deeds happened that day which went unsung.
Criss Jami
As for the majority, it is not so much race as it is political affiliation that really divides it today. What was once an issue of physical difference is now one of intellectual difference. Men have yet to master disagreeing without flashing all their frustrations that come with it; the conservative will throw half-truths while the liberal will throw insults. Combine these and what do you get? A dishonest mockery of a country.
Criss Jami
Of all individuals, the hated, the shunned, and the peculiar are arguably most themselves. They wear no masks whatsoever in order to be accepted and liked; they do seem most guarded, but only by their own hands: as compared to the populace, they are naked.
Criss Jami
Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society.
Criss Jami
I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it's considered moral to critique a résumé yet immoral to critique morality.
Criss Jami
We first become salesmen as children in the confession booths of our parents.
Criss Jami
God speaks of his children shining best in ways that only he can provide. The heavens lift one as a golden child while the flesh lowers one to a child with gold.
Criss Jami
Children are the most reasonable about discipline. When they tell you not to do something, it's always because they know why.
Criss Jami
Generally it appears the case that, when faced with all life's problems, the baby, he wants to cry about everything, the child wants to question everything, the teenager wants to rebel against everything, the young adult wants to solve everything, the middle-aged adult wants to protect everything, and the elder wants to accept everything.
Criss Jami