Criss Jami > Criss's Quotes

“Question like a child, reason like an adult, and write like a sage.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Who you are in public is a test of your conviction; who you are in private, integrity.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“All knowledge meets an end at the question '...Why?”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I sit and ponder my existence: how I'm here, what put me here in these thoughts, these feelings, birthed from a timeless sleep, what it felt like, or rather the lack thereof, to not have been and now to 'be', and suddenly, I realize how absurd I am to exist, the fragility in my understanding of existence; I then wonder why the supernatural, the thought of other beings, of God or of gods, must be distinctly absurd - by which I am no longer sure. 'If I exist and I have made myself absurd to me, then why not they exist while merely believed absurd by me?' Perhaps it is true that in a wandering head, one full of wonders, the natural becomes supernatural and the supernatural becomes preternatural (or rational within the sights of discovery and explanation), just as the return home after a life-long journey feels, for a moment, foreign after the many experiences.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“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, Healology

“To the loyal and to the blood-lovers, in the good families and in the fiery dynasties, life is family and family is life. It is the same people who give advice and their vices to live well who turn out to be the ones who give resource and reason to live long.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Work was intended not to give a man a reason to live, but rather to give him a means to live.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Everyone has their own ways of expression. I believe we all have a lot to say, but finding ways to say it is more than half the battle.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“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.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Pure wisdom is the 'fruit of life'; banal platitudes are the 'bane of existence'.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“If you don't like the solution, change the problem.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Jealousy from a love affair is something (to which) even God can admit.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Law without reason is criminal.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“God hates sin not because he wants us to be good little boys and girls, but because he knows sin destroys that which he loves most: sinners.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“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, Healology

“Few endeavors, if any at all, I find to be inherently mature or inherently immature. Maturity is neither defined by one's particular preferences nor by one's particular activities; rather, it is defined by the strength of one's character.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Initially, the God of the Old Testament might seem overwhelming and domineering to you, or tyrannical, or perhaps even evil, which is good. It is the first telling that God is indeed God, by sheer definition, and not some ear-tickling fairy by which one in his depravity is guaranteed to find another form of stale romanticism or love at first sight. For such a first impression as the latter would be problematic to the essence of Christianity. Therefore the Christians are right in saying that the nature of imperfect men cannot ultimately co-exist with the nature of a perfect God; and that the hope of each man is now desperately found in God's sending of Christ.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“For the case that one thinks he has plateaued in life, God has already set yet another peak for him to reach: and a much more challenging peak than his own, one that which is to serve others.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, 'holiness' is, metaphorically, frozen stiff in his veins: and at that a corrupted formula - i.e. legalism. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the sharpest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“In each generation, there is this certain wisdom of the ages that gets reburied in the fleeting drivelings of modernity; then, like a diamond in the rough, it is yet again unearthed by a very small minority who not only restores it but also polishes it and presents it as something new, something highly valuable and refreshing as understood by the current.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“How easy it is for so many of us today to be undoubtedly full of information yet fully deprived of accurate information.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I'm always talking to God about whether or not he exists - that's how I know I'm a theist.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“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.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“All things remarkable are surprisingly simple; albeit difficult to find.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“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, Healology

“Every exceptional bias against Christianity I find to be evidence for its validity.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Together, we form a necessary paradox; not a senseless contradiction.”
― Criss Jami, Healology