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When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

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
Realizing
Differences
Knowledge
Container
Containers
Content
Difference
Realize

More quotes by Idries Shah

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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
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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.
Idries Shah
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The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
Idries Shah
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The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.
Idries Shah
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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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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
Idries Shah
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Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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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
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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
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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You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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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
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If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
Idries Shah