Idries Shah Quotes

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.

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.

No practice exists in isolation.

The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.

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.

One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.

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

Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.

The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.

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

But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

When people have a hard task to do – one which stretches them – they become less concerned with trivial matters.