Idries Shah Quotes
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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.
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The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.
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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.
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When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it.
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Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
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When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.
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The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.
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When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
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... when we are talking about 'Christians' and 'Moslems' we must first make sure that we are talking about people who have an idea, which should be more or less correct, as to what the other is supposed to believe and what he is expected to do as a consequence of that belief.
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When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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Talking about straws and camels' backs is just one way of approaching things. If you have enough camels, no backs need be broken.
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No practice exists in isolation.
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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.
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The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
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The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
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From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.
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The chicken had his wish, and was magically transformed into a fox. Then he found that he could not digest grain.
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The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.