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

There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion.

— Criss Jami

The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms.

— Criss Jami

A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn't know.

— Criss Jami

The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal.

— Criss Jami

I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.

— Criss Jami

The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.

— Criss Jami

The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal.

— Criss Jami

Find a purpose to serve, not a lifestyle to live.

— Criss Jami

To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little.

— Criss Jami

It always seems as though the definition of love will remain debatable by an opinionated world.

— Criss Jami

What crushes a man weakens him, what angers a man strengthens him, but what softens a man makes him behave.

— Criss Jami

Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.

— Criss Jami

Find a purpose to serve, not a lifestyle to live.

— Criss Jami

I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.

— Criss Jami

If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it.

— Criss Jami

Good works is giving to the poor and the helpless, but divine works is showing them their worth to the One who matters.

— Criss Jami

It is debatable whether blind faith is truly faith at all. Faith is the perceptive gray area where scientific facts meet an individual's experiential truths - the extreme of the former is left feeling in the dark whereas the latter is caught blinded by the light. By proper scientific method, it is intellectually dishonest for me to declare the existence of God with utmost certainty, but to my individual spirit, I would be intellectually dishonest to deny the existence of God even for a second. This leaves the best of both worlds, as the believer is called to be able to give reasons for his faith, a deviation from mere fantasy.

— Criss Jami

I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go.

— Criss Jami

Friends ask you questions; enemies question you.

— Criss Jami

Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.

— Criss Jami

As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?

— Criss Jami

Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness.

— 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

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

Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.

— Criss Jami

Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.

— Criss Jami

Oh I know it's cliché but yeah they say that great men make it in-

— Criss Jami

What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted.

— Criss Jami

A young outcast will often feel that there is something wrong with himself, but as he gets older, grows more confident in who he is, he will adapt, he will begin to feel that there is something wrong with everyone else.

— 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

I do not care about happiness simply because I believe that joy is something worth fighting for.

— Criss Jami

Growing up, I always had a soldier mentality. As a kid I wanted to be a soldier, a fighter pilot, a covert agent, professions that require a great deal of bravery and risk and putting oneself in grave danger in order to complete the mission. Even though I did not become all those things, and unless my predisposition, in its youngest years, already had me leaning towards them, the interest that was there still shaped my philosophies. To this day I honor risk and sacrifice for the good of others - my views on life and love are heavily influenced by this.

— 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

To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little.

— Criss Jami

A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren't quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them.

— Criss Jami

I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.

— Criss Jami

Love is as simple as the absence of self given to another. God, when invited, fills the void of any unrequited love; hence loving is how one is drawn closer to God no matter its most horrific repercussions.

— 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

As followers of Christ, we are to be careful not to remain victims of the many cultural presuppositions of who he is, and what he teaches, insofar as taking for granted our own caricatures of him. Let it boil in both mind and heart the question, 'If Jesus were to appear today, how many of us would actually recognize him and his teachings (or would it simply be a recount of his first visit)?

— Criss Jami

It's not about going around trying to stir up trouble. As long as you're honest and you articulate what you believe to be true, somebody somewhere will become your enemy whether you like it or not.

— Criss Jami

To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little.

— Criss Jami

If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it.

— Criss Jami

The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.

— Criss Jami

With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.

— Criss Jami

Deceit for personal gain is one of history's most recurring crimes. Man's first step towards change would be thinking, counter-arguing, re-thinking, twisting, straightening, perfecting, then believing every original idea he intends to make public before making it public. There is always an angle from which an absolute truth may appear askew just as there is always a personal emotion, or a personal agenda, which alienates the ultimate good of mankind.

— 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

Of course, in our train of thought, we would all like to think we're on the right track, or at least the same railroad company as the right track.

— Criss Jami

You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have.

— 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

When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man's biography regarding God's promised experiences and truth for him - his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences.

— Criss Jami

Cleverness isn't always true nor is the truth always clever.

— Criss Jami

Tolerance! The virtue that makes one bite his tongue so that he can tear out his hair.

— Criss Jami

If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.

— Criss Jami

As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?

— Criss Jami

A young outcast will often feel that there is something wrong with himself, but as he gets older, grows more confident in who he is, he will adapt, he will begin to feel that there is something wrong with everyone else.

— Criss Jami

A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only partially made of truth, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the information may have gone wrong. It is passed on and on until some brave soul questions its validity; that brave soul refuses to bite the apple and let the apple eat him. Forced to start from scratch for the sake of purity and truth, that brave soul, figuratively speaking, fully amputates the information in order to protect his personal judgment. In other words, his ignorance is to be valued more than the lie believed to be true.

— Criss Jami

You have to lift a person up before you can really put them in their place.

— Criss Jami

If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.

— 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

All things remarkable are surprisingly simple; albeit difficult to find.

— Criss Jami

Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted.

— Criss Jami

They call good evil and evil good. There are those who are so easily offended that they lose their ability to ever discern any truth, and this is often derived from a sort of frenzy by way of their own masked prejudice.

— Criss Jami

You can't let the truth bring out the worst and let it get the best of you.

— Criss Jami

In our worldly perceptions of Jesus, we tend to embrace the kindness of his love ('be encouraged') but not the discipline of his love ('and sin no more'). But with the whole scope of his love, or maturity in Christ, we begin relying on him for guidance where we would prefer him to walk beside us rather than behind us.

— Criss Jami

From time to time

— Criss Jami

A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.

— Criss Jami

Have nuts and be nuts.

— Criss Jami

There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.

— Criss Jami

Easily mistaken, it is not about a love for adversity, it is about knowing a strength and a faith so great that adversity, in all its adverse manifestations, hardly even exists.

— Criss Jami

You have to lift a person up before you can really put them in their place.

— Criss Jami

Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.

— Criss Jami

Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back.

— Criss Jami

If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.

— 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

There is a difference between criticizing people and criticizing a people's uninformed ideals. That is, unless one defines himself or others by their ideals, then he is offended, and usually offended secretly. Because oddly enough, this person is the same person quickest to resort to dismissive name-calling, such as 'bigot' or 'zealot'. And oddly enough, he is always the one, the 'open-minded' one, who adamantly protests for, not only himself, but others not to listen to any type of scholarly theological truth inherently for the sake of his own personal, moral beliefs.

— Criss Jami

We often hear about stepping outside ourselves, but rarely about stepping outside our generation.

— Criss Jami

To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.

— Criss Jami

Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm.

— Criss Jami

In God's eyes, a man who teaches one truth and nothing else is more righteous than a man who teaches a million truths and one lie.

— Criss Jami

The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.

— Criss Jami

With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.

— Criss Jami

The theistic philosopher has a tendency to devalue insufficient worldviews, ideologies, and quite often common sense for the greater good, and in such cases, one should not be discouraged when seen as a bad guy. If he stresses over man's perception of a righteous heart, then he has given his heart to man.

— Criss Jami

Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.

— Criss Jami

Anger's like a battery that leaks acid right out of me

— Criss Jami

Oftentimes in reality, the genius is in the position of the antihero. Neither the good guys nor the bad guys really trust him because his truth is universal.

— Criss Jami

After awhile you realize that putting your actions where your mouth is makes you less likely to have to put your money where your mouth is.

— Criss Jami

Many people in a rather reckless context claim to 'just tell it like it is'. In actuality, nobody really stresses what one says so much as the motive behind what one says; hence, he is merely blowing hot air and detracting from 'what is'.

— Criss Jami

Old words are reborn with new faces.

— Criss Jami

Don't change your mind just because people are offended; change your mind if you're wrong.

— Criss Jami

Soar with wit. Conquer with dignity. Handle with care.

— Criss Jami

I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.

— Criss Jami

At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you.

— Criss Jami

Beware: open-mindedness will often say, 'Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion.

— Criss Jami