Idries Shah Quotes

Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.

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

Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.

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

Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.

You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.

Meditation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be.

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

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

Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.

A motto of the human race: Let me do what I like, and give me approval as well.

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.

Knowledge is something which you can use. Belief is something which uses you.

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

The chicken had his wish, and was magically transformed into a fox. Then he found that he could not digest grain.

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

When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.

Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?

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.

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.

You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.

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

An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.

When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?

The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.

The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.

The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.

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.

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.

Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.

Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

A real secret is something which only one person knows.

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.

Christian scholars often say that Sufi theories are close to those of Christianity. Many Moslems maintain that they are essentially derived from Islam. The resemblance of many Sufi ideas to those of several religious and esoteric systems are sometimes taken as evidence of derivation. The Islamic interpretation is that religion is of one origin, differences being due to local or historical causes.

It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.

The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service

It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.

Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.

One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.

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.

If you are uninterested in what I say, there's an end to it. If you like what I say, please try to understand which previous influences have made you like it. If you like some of the things I say, and dislike others, you could try to understand why. If you dislike all I say, why not try to find out what formed your attitude?

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.

One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time.

The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.

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.

If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.