Idries Shah Quotes

Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.

~ Idries Shah

Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword.

~ Idries Shah

Saying of the ProphetInk and BloodThe ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.

~ Idries Shah

Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.

~ Idries Shah

Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible.

~ Idries Shah

The real generosity is when a man does something generous when nobody knows about it.

~ Idries Shah

...action is in fact knowledge in operation. Right action stems from right knowledge. Right knowledge is acquired through the teacher.

~ Idries Shah

Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?

~ Idries Shah

All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up in this manner.

~ Idries Shah

You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to do, and you do know what that means.

~ Idries Shah

They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.

~ Idries Shah

The person that you feel yourself to be, according to the Sufis, is a false person, which has no true reality.

~ Idries Shah

He who knows himself, knows his Lord' means, among other things, that self-deception prevents knowledge.

~ Idries Shah

It has truly been said that 'Humility is not so much a virtue as a necessity, in order to learn.

~ Idries Shah

Words have to die if humans are to live.

~ Idries Shah

Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.

~ Idries Shah

The Sufi is 'One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.

~ Idries Shah

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction.

~ Idries Shah

Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.

~ Idries Shah

Do not try to be humble: learn humility.

~ Idries Shah

If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.

~ Idries Shah

To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.

~ Idries Shah

If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a real teacher.

~ Idries Shah

If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no soul.

~ Idries Shah

Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.

~ Idries Shah

The man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.

~ Idries Shah

There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.

~ Idries Shah

None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.

~ Idries Shah

You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.

~ Idries Shah

Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

~ Idries Shah

You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.

~ Idries Shah

It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the experience of truth that the Sufis have always reposed their trust. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'.

~ Idries Shah

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

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

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?

~ Idries Shah

One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.

~ Idries Shah

The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: 'the Sufis are not merchants'.

~ Idries Shah

If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?

~ Idries Shah

Inner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.

~ Idries Shah

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

~ Idries Shah