Idries Shah Quotes

79 Sourced Quotes

The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.

Idries Shah
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

Idries Shah
Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

Idries Shah
Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

Idries Shah
Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.

Idries Shah
If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.

Idries Shah
The lecture which you are about to hear from Sheikh Rahimi lacks conviction. Why, he is so unsere of himself that he has actually adducted written proofs and authorities to what he says.

Idries Shah
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.

Idries Shah
For every person there is an interpretation.

Idries Shah
You will know the real student because he seeks whatever there is to be found.

Idries Shah
When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.

Idries Shah
The more you look at 'common knowledge', the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge. No real knowledge is common.

Idries Shah
The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.

Idries Shah
It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.

Idries Shah
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.

Idries Shah
Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal. Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.

Idries Shah
A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.

Idries Shah
Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.

Idries Shah
The proverb says that 'The answer to a fool is silence'. Observation, however, indicates that almost any other answer will have the same effect in the long run.

Idries Shah
From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.

Idries Shah
Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials.

Idries Shah
People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man.

Idries Shah
You have not forgotten to remember; You have remembered to forget. But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember - and generally more practical.

Idries Shah
Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.

Idries Shah
If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.

Idries Shah
Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?

Idries Shah
The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.

Idries Shah
If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!

Idries Shah
The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.

Idries Shah
To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.

Idries Shah