Idries Shah Quotes

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

Because there is a word for perfection, people will always imagine that they know it.

~ Idries Shah

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

~ Idries Shah

From a personal experience and the examination of literature, I feel that we cannot take for granted that a dialogue, without information and perhaps without understanding, is possible between any individuals or groups on all levels. So the prerequisite is information.

~ Idries Shah

The important place held by Jesus among the world's six hundred million Moslems... and the agreement of both religions about the necessity for surrender to God as the means of salvation, thus makes it comparatively easy for a Moslem to address himself to Christians: the sympathy and the history are already there.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

And there are many people, both Moslem and Christian, who have a good grasp of each others0 conceptions of surrender to God an other principles. But the widespread existence of bias, misinformation and lack of knowledge (…) militate against the effectiveness of dialogue, (…) by the most subtle and one of the most effective of instruments, the subconscious, almost the subliminal, introduction of hostility.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

These lecture provide material for the consideration of common factors, in theory and in development, from the viewpoint of the idea of surrender to the Divine Will, reviewing some aspects of the interplay between Christians and Moslems, and introducing material from and about Sufis.

~ Idries Shah

… 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.

~ Idries Shah

Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.

~ Idries Shah

When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty — what difference does it make what your decisions are?

~ Idries Shah

Neither imagine that you are false, nor lash yourself, for both may be forms of self-indulgence.

~ Idries Shah

To drown in treacle is just as unpleasant as to drown in mud.People today are in danger of drowning in information; but because they have been taught 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.The lightning said to the oak tree: 'Stand aside, or take what is coming to you!

~ Idries Shah

I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages. Rabia

~ Idries Shah

When the human being says:'It is not true...'He may mean:'I don't know about it, so I think it is untrue.'Or:'I don't like it.

~ Idries Shah

You can keep going on much less attention than you crave.

~ Idries Shah

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

~ Idries Shah

A man is deficient in understanding until he perceives that there is a whole cycle of evolution possible within himself: repeating endlessly, offering opportunities for personal development.

~ Idries Shah

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.

~ Idries Shah

Talent is the presence of ability and absence of understanding about the source and operation of knowledge.

~ Idries Shah

People are always trying to understand.There is only one way to do that.It is to discover < + i + >why< + i + > you want to understand.

~ Idries Shah

We are adjured not to burn the candle at both ends.But how many people have verified that physically possible?

~ Idries Shah

Sufism is known by means of itself.

~ Idries Shah

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

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.

~ Idries Shah

Sufism is experiential. Capacities, even those for learning beyond a certain point, are provoked by Sufis, by one's own efforts and what results from them, and by an element of what is referred to by Sufis as the Divine.

~ Idries Shah

A real secret is something which only one person knows.

~ Idries Shah

People think that they think things, and they also think that they know things. They could usefully give some attention to the question of whether they know what they think and know what they think they know.

~ Idries Shah

Day and NightThe night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.

~ Idries Shah

Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaTruthful man:He who is, secretly, regarded by everyone as an enemy.

~ Idries Shah

Teach honesty by all means - you do know what it is, don't you?

~ Idries Shah

Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition

~ Idries Shah

From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying:'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.

~ Idries Shah

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.

~ Idries Shah

The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all. Ibn Arabi.

~ Idries Shah

You will always have doubts, but only discover them at a useful time for your weakness to point them out.

~ Idries Shah

Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.

~ Idries Shah

Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism.

~ Idries Shah

Much religious teaching in the world is in reality a confused or deteriorated form, very different from its roots.

~ Idries Shah