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To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.

Idries Shah

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Idries Shah
Age: 72 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 16
Died: 1996
Died: November 23
Author
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Teacher
Writer
Simla
Arkon Daraul
Able
Therefore
Ideas
Struggle
Little
Freedom
People
Hope
Idea
Chains
Else
Obsessed
Form
Instance
Littles
Slavery

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History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
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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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If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving. Take what you are given, not what you want to be given. Give what cannot be taken.
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The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
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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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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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Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
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He that is purified by love is pure and he that is absorbed in the Beloved and hath abandoned all else is a Sufi.Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah.
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
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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.
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Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
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The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.
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You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
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When the lion had eaten its fill, and the jackals had taken their share, the ants came along and finished up the meat from the bones of the haughty stag.
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Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature
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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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