Idries Shah Quotes
There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.
Quotes to Explore
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The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
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Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.
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Following graduation from Amherst, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship enabled me to test the depth of my interest in literary scholarship by beginning graduate studies at Harvard University.
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The little I know I owe to my ignorance.
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Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity, both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.
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The test of character is having the ability to meet challenges.
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Ignorance of the facts of life gave me my beloved son, Dickon, but at what cost to both him and me, I cannot hazard a guess.
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I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.
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The knowledge from an enlightened person breaks on the hard rocks of ignorance.
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There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
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God's truth is helped by no man's ignorance.
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In my family, there was no celebration of ignorance. They'd come and see Chekhov or Shakespeare. I've got a sister who got a first in her degree. We don't sit around watching TV all the time.
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The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.
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When a test pilot comes off a flight, there is typically another pilot who is going to take it up, and he believes in the debriefing. You don't keep something to yourself.
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Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.
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The pilots I did test for, I was the only black actor testing against white actors for parts that were written white.
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One has to reach to the absolute state of awareness: that is Zen. You cannot do it every morning for a few minutes or for half an hour and then forget all about it. It has to become like your heartbeat. You have to sit in it, you have to walk in it. Yes, you have even to sleep in it.
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If an offender has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death.
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There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.
