Quote

History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.

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
Usually
Happened
History
Thought
People
Significant

More quotes by Idries Shah

Image
One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
Idries Shah
Image
Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
Idries Shah
Image
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
Idries Shah
Image
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
Image
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.
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
You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
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
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
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.
Idries Shah
Image
Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
Idries Shah
Image
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.
Idries Shah
Image
The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
Idries Shah
Image
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.
Idries Shah
Image
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.
Idries Shah
Image
If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
Idries Shah
Image
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
Image
The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
Idries Shah