Idries Shah Quotes
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A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung to death by scorpions.
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No practice exists in isolation.
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Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
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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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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.
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If a pot can multiply. One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a neighbour, who was giving a feast. The neighbour returned them, together with one extra one – a very tiny pot. 'What is this?' asked Nasrudin. 'According to law, I have given you the offspring of your property which was born when the pots were in my care,' said the joker. Shortly afterwards Nasrudin borrowed his neighbour's pots, but did not return them. The man came round to get them back. 'Alas!' said Nasrudin, 'they are dead. We have established, have we not, that pots are mortal?'.
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The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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A real secret is something which only one person knows.
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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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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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.
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
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To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.
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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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A motto of the human race: Let me do what I like, and give me approval as well.
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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.
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When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.
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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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We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
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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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Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.
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When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.
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People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
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None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
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Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.
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The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
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