Quotes by Criss Jami

A thief is one who insists on sharing his victimhood.

It is the nature of physics to hear the loudest of mouths over the most comprehensive ones.

Society tells me to follow my own truth, but I dont let society tell me what to do. If you need someone to tell you that, chances are youre part of the crowd that will move on to the next fashion that comes around.

Most people want so desperately to be an individual yet are so easily shaped by the media.

Oftentimes in a society when people of a certain type, whether individual or a group, are subconsciously portrayed by the media as abnormal, they also slowly, subconsciously become enemies of that society due to feelings of cultural guilt. Ultimately by this the inflated media is an enemy of its very own cause.

When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie.

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

The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation.

Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision.

As cliché as it might sound, Id rather lose than win by cheating. The latter is a much deeper, more personal loss in that one is admittedly whispering to himself his lack of competence. His cheating then begets more cheating, as he is ever-privately, ever-subconsciously insulting himself; thus, gradually deteriorating any remaining confidence.

Few endeavors, if any at all, I find to be inherently mature or inherently immature. Maturity is neither defined by ones particular preferences nor by ones particular activities; rather, it is defined by the strength of ones character.

One either cares what others think about him, or cares what others think he thinks about them. If you want to find someone who doesnt care in the slightest what anyone thinks, try a lunatic asylum.

Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie.

The hardest chore to do, and to do right, is to think. Why do you think the common man would choose labor, partially, as a distraction from his own thoughts? It is because that level of stress, he most absolutely abhors.

Pride is born as a mountaintop on a valley, but dies as an abyss in which it is too deep and too dark to see the better.

Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: I must stop him before he stops me. In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful.

Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied.

To swear day and night by media slander will make one a bigger victim than the slandered. It doesnt take much to begin to fear a mere illusion of human badness.

God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because theyre so empirically familiar with how atheists think.

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.