Quote

Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.

Idries Shah

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Idries Shah
Age: 72 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 16
Died: 1996
Died: November 23
Author
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Teacher
Writer
Simla
Arkon Daraul
Sometimes
Pessimist
Optimist
Extra
Extras
Information

More quotes by Idries Shah

Image
When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.
Idries Shah
Image
Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
Idries Shah
Image
Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.
Idries Shah
Image
From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
Idries Shah
Image
The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.
Idries Shah
Image
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.
Idries Shah
Image
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
Image
Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
Idries Shah
Image
When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.
Idries Shah
Image
The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
Idries Shah
Image
A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.
Idries Shah
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Idries Shah
Image
Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
Idries Shah
Image
The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.
Idries Shah
Image
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.
Idries Shah
Image
People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
Idries Shah
Image
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.
Idries Shah
Image
The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
Idries Shah