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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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Idries Shah
Age: 72 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 16
Died: 1996
Died: November 23
Author
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Teacher
Writer
Simla
Arkon Daraul
Choice
Choose
Taught
Choices
Word
People
Fraud

More quotes by Idries Shah

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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.
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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.
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The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.
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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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It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.
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When the Higher Man does something worthy of admiration, it is an evidence of his Mastership, not the object of it.
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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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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
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The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.
Idries Shah
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When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.
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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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
Idries Shah
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Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature
Idries Shah
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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
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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 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