Criss Jami Quotes

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

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

Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different.

~ 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

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

A prophet is always underestimated, and part of what makes one a prophet is that he doesn't really mind it.

~ Criss Jami

What man is really anti-progressive? For he is only anti-certain-people's-visions-for-the-future.

~ Criss Jami

Many of us are literally prone to believing the most blatantly nonsensical untruths. There are some opinions and some beliefs so incredibly moronic, you actually feel stupid for not believing them; and it's probably because in giving the benefit of the doubt you self-doubt, you convince yourself into lame passivity and blind acceptance, you tell yourself, 'Maybe I'm just missing something here.

~ Criss Jami

I am not convinced of the argument, 'I want to believe; it is only those awful Christians I hate. They get in the way of my belief.' If you hate Christians more than you love Christ, you do not love Christ. It comes to mind the question, 'If you do not love your brother or sister whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?

~ Criss Jami

You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do...and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself.

~ Criss Jami

I once began to ask around what constitutes a good poem. It felt petty, in a sense. A boy would need no help in deciding which girls he thinks are pretty.

~ Criss Jami

Still, one can be honest yet quite mistaken.

~ Criss Jami

I pity the man who praises God only when things go his way.

~ Criss Jami

You can receive all the compliments in the world, but that won't do a thing unless you believe it yourself.

~ Criss Jami

Naturally, I always place my word over anyone else's simply because I know why I said what I said.

~ Criss Jami

I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator.

~ Criss Jami

People think that fun in Christ is non-existent, but there is fun wherever your heart lives.

~ Criss Jami

To believe in the truth of Christ is to be introduced to another form of hatred, and that is not sharing Him.

~ Criss Jami

A major gap between many of the denominations stems from how people define some of the most basic terms, such as 'religion' itself.

~ Criss Jami

In learning and argumentation, the quality brain is similar to a facility of maximum security. What passes the logic test, free of fallacy and pretense, then must pass the test of biblical accuracy in order to proceed as an adopted, reliable truth.

~ Criss Jami

In some cases, I am able to respect what so many call bigots. Such people have a more solid foundation for drawing their lines when it comes to the security of their ways and quite possibly the security of mankind. They rely on something that has worked to get man this far without placing ideals blindly driven by emotion first; they have a sure line and they say, 'No.' That, in a sense, is something I find to be highly respectable.

~ Criss Jami

Worldly religion is that which replaces Faith with mere wishful thinking. One must not make the common mistake of putting his faith in all the things he thinks God ought to bless him with; he should instead keep his faith planted in God Himself. Present to Him his needs and wants like a child to his Father, but have faith only in His wisdom and goodness like a servant to his King. God must always be one's Everything before He is one's token to everything.

~ Criss Jami

Silence might be a shout for the truth. It might be the speech that someday, in its truest, most uncontaminated, unadulterated state, all will be revealed.

~ Criss Jami

God wants us to humbly and sincerely ask him things. How often do you enjoy people talking about you without taking the time to get to know you?

~ Criss Jami

With too much pride a man cannot learn a thing. In and of itself, learning teaches you how foolish you are.

~ Criss Jami

An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers?

~ Criss Jami

There's a difference between thinking you can't be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret.

~ Criss Jami

The humble ones are always learning and improving, and their secret is always that it's a secret.

~ Criss Jami

I'm starting to think that my level of intrigue outweighs my fear of controversy.

~ Criss Jami

Life is about discovering things worth dying for.

~ Criss Jami

On athleticism, God knows no favor. It seems rather he is in the business of teaching winners how to lose and losers how to win.

~ Criss Jami

As for those who spite you, and seemingly just because, it's only evident that they're learning from you. Maybe you taste bad - kind of like medicine, kind of like truth - and to them, you're thought unsafe. There is flattery in being chewed out and spit up. Humans have always had a hard time digesting foreign things.

~ Criss Jami

While there may be various tips, pointers, ingredients, and strategies to success, there is no one formula that always guarantees it other than to keep learning from failure itself.

~ Criss Jami

Peculiar I say, how so often the smallest, most seemingly insignificant details later unveil their faces as vital means for progression.

~ Criss Jami

Of course we'll win. And even if we were to lose, we'd win at losing.

~ Criss Jami

It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head.

~ Criss Jami

The surface of learning is hearing what your ears aren't prepared to hear, and the core of learning is hearing what your ears don't want to hear.

~ Criss Jami

Good intentions but bad results, bad results but lessons learned. There is a dark corner on every task beautiful and a beautiful corner on every task dark.

~ Criss Jami

The whole bloated sensation of success is wiped clean when among family. There is no pressure of being looked upon as 'the brilliant one' but rather the comforts of always being the pupil.

~ Criss Jami

To the short-sighted, through the fog, God must be a monster.

~ Criss Jami