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

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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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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
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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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You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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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.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.
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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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Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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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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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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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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When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
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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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Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.
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Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the veils which have to be dissolved in the mind.
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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.
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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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