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History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
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
Significant
Usually
Happened
History
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People
More quotes by Idries Shah
The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
Idries Shah
Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
Idries Shah
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
Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
Idries Shah
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
Idries Shah
A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.
Idries Shah
One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time.
Idries Shah
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
From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
Idries Shah
To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.
Idries Shah
Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
Idries Shah
Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
Idries Shah
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
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
Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the veils which have to be dissolved in the mind.
Idries Shah
Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
Idries Shah
You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
Idries Shah
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
Idries Shah
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