Criss Jami Quotes

Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind.

~ Criss Jami

The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated.

~ Criss Jami

Creativity is the highest form of intelligence. Over time, after developing a more advanced creative brain, I started feeling that my college education was more so something to be ashamed of rather than something to be proud of.

~ Criss Jami

Armed neutrality makes it much easier to detect hypocrisy.

~ Criss Jami

I like solitude. It is when you truly hear and speak your natural, unadulterated mind, and out comes your most stupid self as well as your most intelligent self. It is when you realize who you are and the extents of the good and the evils which you are capable of.

~ Criss Jami

Genius, throughout history, has been found difficult to classify because it varies in amount: It's rare to find a genius in the context of the noun, but most people, if not all, have a bit of genius in them in the context of the adjective.

~ Criss Jami

It is not enough to call yourself a 'free thinker' just because you can change your beliefs. A whole mess of people change their beliefs based on what is fashionable rather than what is factual, which, by always following the crowd, would be the complete opposite of the beauty of a free thinker.

~ Criss Jami

It is not that men become too intelligent for God,' says the Apologist, 'but rather they become too arrogant for intelligence.

~ Criss Jami

To be naive is to be unaware of how stupid and cruel other people are; but, by some definitions, ignorance is nearly the opposite of naivety in being a kind of cynicism, in being unaware of their intelligence and humanity. It seems to be a normal although unfortunate case that the great many of us consciously abhor ignorance in others yet subconsciously practice it ourselves: as naivety is apparent and well-known to inflict its damage upon oneself; whereas the alternative and the easier, ignorance, its damage upon others.

~ Criss Jami

Like all great things which then become fashions, science, as now the universal stamp of approval, probably receives more abuse than any other field of study. Glaze the word itself over whatever vague ideology one may presume ratified, no matter the degree of pseudo-science or lack of scholarly credibility packaged within, and the many will consume it like gravy on a feast. My thought for the time is that as the promise of true science increases, so shall rise its many more superficial counterparts as provided by the agenda-bound trendies and hyper-ambitious laypersons to boot.

~ Criss Jami

Any halfway clever devil would decorate the highway to Hell as beautiful as possible.

~ Criss Jami

Character that is fruit-producing can be summed up in the mastery of these 5 qualities: morals, but a sense of humor; love, but respect for criticism; intelligence without pretense; humility without self-loathing; and a mind open, but with solid convictions.

~ Criss Jami

Science is knowledge meeting humility meeting curiosity: ever-evolving, always learning. Atheism is often but knowledge meeting arrogance: a masquerade under the wing of the beauty of science. Religion is infamously a weight under the one wing; then under the other is atheism, the championed masquerade.

~ Criss Jami

The internet is where some people go to show their true intelligence; others, their hidden stupidity.

~ Criss Jami

Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.

~ Criss Jami

If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic.

~ Criss Jami

Only the man who thinks himself a fool is as wise as he thinks.

~ Criss Jami

Unsettling are the days in which everyone is an expert.

~ Criss Jami

I respect traditional people - they have the eyes which see value in the tarnished. This is a gift in itself. Tradition requires a wealth of discipline in order to be adhered to, hence it is rarely found in youth.

~ Criss Jami

Knowing the truth is so minuscule compared to having the nerve to say it...and even more to live it.

~ Criss Jami

You can never make someone like something they don't like, but you can always help them to better understand it.

~ Criss Jami

There is this common notion that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world. I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing.

~ Criss Jami

A number of our scientists boast intelligence but lack wisdom. I find those to be the predictable ones.

~ Criss Jami

The survival of poor opinions can make a thinker feel as though he is failing humanity.

~ Criss Jami

So, how close are love and genius, really? We know that they are both mentioned far more than lived.

~ Criss Jami

You wander. You work nearly every job known to man, it seems, only to arrive at the wonderings of philosophy.

~ Criss Jami

Angels are good not simply because they see bad as bad, but also because they see bad as corny.

~ Criss Jami

The best people are always the worst. They drive everyone mad by being so good at second-guessing everything bad.

~ Criss Jami

To be intuitive is to possess a godly characteristic: to be bad at second-guessing the good.

~ Criss Jami

Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men - to dish it out without being able to take it - the blind leading the blind into more blindness.

~ Criss Jami

Let our information and social technologies raise awareness and not propaganda, build connections and not passive-aggression.

~ Criss Jami

If you're not a smart worker, it's about how hard you work double the amount from the heart; if you're not a hard worker, it's about how smart you work but times two from the brain.

~ Criss Jami

Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.

~ Criss Jami

If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it's probably because your heart is talking.

~ Criss Jami

Every new generation believes its own period to be absolutely superior intellectually - greater than all past cultures yet equal among its modern cultures.

~ Criss Jami

The unteachable man is sentenced to being taught only by experience. The tragedy is he reaches nothing further than his own pain.

~ Criss Jami

History does seem to repeat itself hence it's mindboggling to still hear the 'avoid all negative people' speeches from, of all people, supposedly important spiritual teachers. Ironically, their congregations would probably be the ones hiding their faces from the accuracies of truth speakers like Christ. Now, Christ was the complete opposite of negative, however the danger is that truth is often misunderstood as negativity by those who are constantly taught to only seek flattery.

~ Criss Jami

Time and time over it is the ones who try a little too hard to be innovative rebels - and for the sheer glory of being considered innovative rebels - who then turn out not quite as innovative or as rebellious as they would like to think they are.

~ Criss Jami

If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.

~ Criss Jami

The weather is nature's disruptor of human plans and busybodies. Of all the things on earth, nature's disruption is what we know we can depend on, as it is essentially uncontrolled by men.

~ Criss Jami