Criss Jami Quotes

How is it that some celebrities, whom the average person would believe to have all the popularity a human being could want, still admit to feeling lonely? It is quite naive to assume that popularity is the remedy for loneliness. Loneliness does not necessarily equal physical solitude, it is the inability to be oneself and rightfully represented as oneself.

~ Criss Jami

The spirit of arrogance most definitely makes you shine. It paints a bright red target on your own forehead.

~ Criss Jami

If you're capable of despising your own behavior, you might just love yourself.

~ Criss Jami

People assume that repetition is always a static thing, but I beg to differ. Repetition is just as often the complete opposite of that: or a sign of rapid personal growth. In this repetition manifests one's ability to go on experiencing again the very same thing from a different perspective and in a brand-new light.

~ Criss Jami

Truth in Christ is not a matter of being near or far like in martial arts when you strive for a black belt. He saves us then we grow, not the other way around.

~ Criss Jami

Let me be content with myself to the degree that my capacity to serve others is present, yet discontent with myself to the degree that I may still like to grow in better service for others.

~ Criss Jami

We are to love God most importantly so that we can grow to love people as he loved us, not so that we can feel more divine and worthy than the worldly.

~ Criss Jami

An anomaly has his own ambitions. You can try reasoning with him, but that's like using money to bribe a beast.

~ Criss Jami

To spend your time wanting things is to smother your time for achieving things beyond your expectations.

~ Criss Jami

The 2 extremes, neither one worse than the other: the result of bad religion is self-loathing and violence; the result of bad spirituality is self-worship and narcissism.

~ Criss Jami

You can be yourself without pursuing yourself. Have you ever seen a dog chase his own tail? He just runs in circles.

~ Criss Jami

No man voluntarily expresses his opinion without some intent to make a difference, and even if he does, he shouldn't.

~ Criss Jami

Reason begets honesty, and honesty, if given its head, begets confidence; so consequently, there is a sort of grand authority in the stances of those who know why they are standing.

~ Criss Jami

A wise man's goal shouldn't be to say something profound, but to say something useful.

~ Criss Jami

A part of me genuinely wanted to be the worst because I was so sick of everyone fighting to be the best.

~ Criss Jami

The only truths worth arguing about are those truths that could prevent or lead to circumstances that may bite us in the rear sooner or later.

~ Criss Jami

If one should criticize one should always have a meaningful explanation to accompany.

~ Criss Jami

The actual confident man, the man truly sure of himself, is not he who esteems himself higher than others, but he who is sure enough that he can bear to esteem others higher than himself.

~ Criss Jami

Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little.

~ Criss Jami

Where neither go wrong, the naive only see the world as a victim of bad doctrine; the cynic only sees good doctrine as a victim of the world.

~ Criss Jami

There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you're wrong and you can't face it, the other is when you're right and nobody else can face it.

~ Criss Jami

The older you get, the more you understand how your conscience works. The biggest and only critic lives in your perception of people's perception of you rather than people's perception of you.

~ Criss Jami

Confidence turns into pride only when you are in denial of your mistakes.

~ Criss Jami

The Christian should never have to put others down in order to feel good about himself. Instead, he can simply check out the media's insistent portrayal of Christianity and feel grateful that he isn't as deceived as the masses who really swallow the garbage. Ignorance is ultimately how people put themselves down, and the mere Christian who knows what entails the mere Christian is ultimately free from such.

~ Criss Jami

There is more to joy than looking only for affirmation, refusing to be challenged is the only bigotry.

~ Criss Jami

My confidence is in the idea that I may be wrong on this or that. No man in this life should ever have to bear the burden of perfection.

~ Criss Jami

It is a noble responsibility to not back down when you know that you know that you know that you are right.

~ Criss Jami

The pressure of adversity is the most powerful sustainer of accountability. It's as though everything you do is multiplied by 50 in order to surpass those with a head-start. I was never capable of slacking when at the threshold of failure.

~ Criss Jami

Assuming what people want is about as controlled as using fireworks to start a fire.

~ Criss Jami

The man who sins but wants to purify it is no more a sinner than the man who doesn't sin but wants to sin.

~ Criss Jami

Heresy would like to think of itself as 'invented Truth'. But of course, all Reason and Logic would agree that no man can ever create Truth; he can only discover it. If heresy were ever at all beneficial, God would use it really to bring one right back to Truth, as countless 'inventions' have brought men to discovery.

~ Criss Jami

It's okay to be honest about not knowing rather than spreading falsehood. While it is often said that honesty is the best policy, silence is the second best policy.

~ Criss Jami

Some people's theologies come across as blatantly wrong when weighed against what is revealed in Scripture. However God has mercy on those who may be wrong but genuinely seek understanding before seeking themselves.

~ Criss Jami

We live in an age so legalistic, we find it hard to imagine someone wanting to obey their Lord simply because they love their God.

~ Criss Jami

If you are not there for other people, do not expect them to be there for you. In many a case one might conclude that this is part of God's sovereign justice. His grace, however, is that He Himself will always be there for you, no matter what.

~ Criss Jami

What we fail to realize is we often become like Pharisees in our ruthless attempts to identify Pharisees (and impostors). While indeed some people use the old laws of religious pride to tear down men of God, others use the new laws of anti-religious anger to tear down men of God.

~ Criss Jami

It is neither just the religious, the spiritual, the power-hungry, the evil, the ignorant, the corrupt, the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Jew, nor the atheist that makes a hypocrite, but being a human being. Any man who thinks himself to be free of hypocrisy while committed to cherry-picking others for such, I am confident, the Almighty can prove to him a great deal of his own hypocrisy even beyond his earthly comprehension.

~ Criss Jami

If Christ be a fraud, he was among the most peculiar yet brilliant of frauds in saying that only he was the way, the truth, and the life. This is the importance of grace - some people think that simply being nice and not harming others is morality; others think that following rules and tithing are morality. But without Christ, all moral beliefs ultimately boil down to the one sin which perpetually rails against the concept of grace: man's lawful, religious, and futile attempt at establishing his own righteousness.

~ Criss Jami

The conscious attempt to be a good person without Christ is as legalistic as an attempt to make it into Heaven through empty religiosity.

~ Criss Jami

Heroic ambition seemed to have been the cause of much of the world's pain then - quite like it is now. No villain ever saw himself a villain: he only saw himself a hero, and this goes just as no hero ever saw himself a hero: he simply did what he had to do. No true hero initially sets out with intentions of being deemed a hero.

~ Criss Jami