Criss Jami Quotes

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

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#2. Stretched and skewed
Tap of the 8-ball and the cue
Scratches fall through
They are the scars of you

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#3. Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression.

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#4. The denial of truth does not harm the Truth; it only harms that which denies the Truth.

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#5. Life is about discovering things worth dying for.

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#6. Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone's parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone's child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend.

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#7. Competition works best in sports, but humans get addicted to stuff.

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#8. 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.

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#9. 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?

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#10. Christ died not so that you could freely go on sinning, and therefore, continue dying; He died rather so that you could freely grow in obedience, and therefore, start living.

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#11. 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.

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#12. 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?

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#13. A pure heart does not demean the spirit of an individual, it, instead, compels the individual to examine his spirit.

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#14. Everyone has a natural slant towards seeking themselves. This gets in the way of seeking God unless God intervenes.

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

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#16. When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.

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#17. Wherever there is abuse there is also corruption. Politics, philosophy, theology, science, industry, any field with the potential to affect the well-being of others can be destroyed by abuse and saved by good will.

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#18. People love answers, but only as long as they are the ones who came up with them.

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#19. On the one hand you had people constantly fighting Hell; on the other, you had people constantly fighting Hell on earth.

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#20. For those constantly full of joy, they sometimes feel a little guilty for always feeling so good. That guilt is compassion: it flies in with an attempt to share one's joy with others who do not have it.

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#21. 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.

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#22. Sanity for anyone is pretty much out of the question, as both the saint and the sinner appear only equally insane: the saint appears it for actually believing in a place of eternal torment; the sinner, for deciding to risk going to that place of eternal torment.

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#23. To be more precise about it, it is neither close nor open-mindedness but wisdom, discernment, and a pure heart that God wants.

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#24. 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.

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#25. A fruitless year, take a fearless heart
One that blooms late will flourish in the dark

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#26. God's relationship with man does not work in a way in which man stumbles and then God has to drop what he is doing in order to lift him up; rather, man stumbles so that God can lift him up. Hence it is utterly impossible to truly diminish his glory.

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#27. Respect? Of course, always, to all, because everything seems funnier when you're trying to show respect.

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

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

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#30. It is not so much freedom of speech but the right to truth that great men protect.

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

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#32. The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.

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#33. Even the self-assured truth-finders and self-proclaimed freedom-fighters reject Truth. As admirable as such endeavors may be, they still only really want it so long as it to some extent confirms what they had already presumed to be true.

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#34. The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it.

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#35. The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the patience of God, and Christ is evidence for the forgiveness of God. It is when we are wrapped up in our own little peeves that we begin to displace His benevolence with malevolence.

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#36. The first reaction is surely the most natural one, but not always the most correct one; thereupon, the invention of apologies.

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#37. I would rather my descendants have greater abilities and a greater knowledge of the love of Christ than I do, much like standing on one's shoulders in order to get a clearer view of the valley.

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

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#39. 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.

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

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#41. Ultimate prosperity is one's value within. It takes a man of depth, morality, and charm to be envied yet without a sign of wealth or romance. A passion to prove such inner worth is his permission to achieve whatever he desires.

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#42. As a kid my heart would break for the villains.

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#43. Perhaps not everything happens for a reason. That is, until you make it so; because for everything there is a season, which can, in fact, become beautiful.

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#44. I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.

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#45. Self-awareness - the commendable ability to be yourself without being a nuisance to someone else.

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#46. 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.

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#47. Pretentiousness isn't always just big words and meaningless jargon, but also pretty words that either when put into action don't mean beans or hurt you in the long run. Oftentimes, the former appeals to the intellect whereas the latter appeals to the heart.

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#48. It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.

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#49. When you meet someone, and you find that they are prejudiced against your kind, it might be your chance, not to confirm, but to be the one to finally change their mind.

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#50. The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption.

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#51. In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style.

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#52. If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it.

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#53. Those who stand for different causes during different generations often experience the same oppositions and the same difficulties as those of the previous and the next generations. That is the basis of history repeating itself.

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#54. Women show men beauty in things beyond their ambitions. Women tell men to stop and smell the roses.

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#55. Ingredients to success: know what you do well, know what to do well, and know someone who's swell.

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#56. 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.

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#57. Our poor world aspires simply to point out where Christians have gone wrong, and that is pretty much where it goes wrong. It is as though many of us, when of the world, are actually all the more judgmental: for we are stuck on a bad Christian while the Christian is pinned to a good Christ.

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#58. Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.

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#59. To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something.

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

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#61. Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.

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#62. There's sometimes a tugging feeling you get to push further when you aren't being challenged enough or when things get too comfortable.

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#63. ...And maybe one day you will wake up as an infant in a completely different universe, and your entire life thus far was just one big dream.

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#64. People, generally, are equally insecure. They just show it (or hide it) differently.

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#65. It often seems as though the silent, humble servant is secretly wiser and more discerning than the haughty master; yet through dutiful (and sometimes insecure) surrender he continues to serve and carry out petty orders in loyal acquiesce.

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#66. If you use a philosophy education well, you can get your foot in the door of any industry you please. Industries are like the blossoms on a tree while philosophy is the trunk - it holds the tree together, but it often goes unnoticed.

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#67. The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.

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#68. The real test of love is loving those who we feel are the hardest ones to love.

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

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#70. The thing about stereotyping is it's usually just throwing rocks into a crowd hoping to hit somebody who deserves it.

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#71. 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.

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#72. Love is one of those topics that plenty of people try to write about but not enough try to do.

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#73. When it comes to world news, attitude is what marks the distinction between justice and vengeance. Justice is pure, but vengeance brings more ruin.

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

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#75. 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.

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#76. Your love is as stable as you are: It's not about how good a person makes you feel, but rather what good you can do for them.

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#77. God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they're so empirically familiar with how atheists think.

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#78. 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.

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#79. People will seek the ends of the galaxy to avoid that which they need most.

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#80. Happiness is good, but well-overrated: what we hate most are the very motivators that put us in gear. A man drifts along with little to contribute until something agitates him enough to make a difference, whether for himself or for his communities.

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#81. In societies where coolness and being cool is a top priority, the religious replace the word 'religious' with 'spiritual' to make their faiths seem less extreme.

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#82. The worst evil is that most subtle evil. It is the evil that is merely 'base' which is more evil than evil itself. For it is the one closest to righteousness, the one indistinguishable and doused in virtue.

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#83. If I were to envy any persons on this planet, it would be mountain hermits. You often hear old platitudes such as, 'Speak out. Be heard.' On the contrary, a breath of fresh air would be something like: 'Silence, think for at least 15 minutes, and then maybe speak out.

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#84. 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.

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#85. God will save whomever He chooses to save. The Christian should proselytize not because he thinks he can change everybody; he should proselytize because the Gospel being shared is the ultimate act of love: because he thinks he can love everybody.

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#86. I've come to the point where I never feel the need to stop and evaluate whether or not I am happy. I'm just 'being', and without question, by default, it works.

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#87. I still believe that many Americans have a deep longing for that glorious moment when a sermon is more Biblical than American.

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

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#89. 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.

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#90. If you assume that the new - and simply because it's new - is always to be better than the old, chances are you've never known anything valuable.

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

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#92. When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.

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#93. Today's zealots are mostly those pretending to be anti-religious.

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#94. Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food.

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

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#96. Extreme right-wingers are known for giving God a bad name; extreme left-wingers are known for giving God a weak name. He's not as simple as conservative versus liberal, old versus new. His wings are balanced. God is both and neither.

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#97. When I look at a person, I see a person - not a rank, not a class, not a title.

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#98. A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness.

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#99. 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.

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#100. When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.

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