Idries Shah Quotes
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Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
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You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
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Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.
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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
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The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?
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There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.
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Meditation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be.
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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.
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The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.
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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.
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It is not enough that there is a collection of people with the common aim of working in unison towards an objective... Aspiration and desire only are not enough.
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
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A real secret is something which only one person knows.
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But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
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If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.
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From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
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If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.
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The more wakeful a man is to the things which surround him, the more asleep is he, and his waking is worse than his sleep.
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Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
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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.
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Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.
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Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.