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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
Else
Obsessed
Form
Instance
Littles
Slavery
Able
Therefore
Ideas
Struggle
Little
Freedom
People
Hope
Idea
Chains

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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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The chicken had his wish, and was magically transformed into a fox. Then he found that he could not digest grain.
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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
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If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!
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To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.
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The more you look at 'common knowledge', the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge. No real knowledge is common.
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When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
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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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A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
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But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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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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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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The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
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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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From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
Idries Shah
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The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
Idries Shah
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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
Idries Shah
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People today are in danger of drowning in information but, because they have been taught that 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.
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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