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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
Choices
Word
People
Fraud
Choice
Choose
Taught

More quotes by Idries Shah

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If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.
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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.
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Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
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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.
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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
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The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
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Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?
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If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
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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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The learned person who only talks will never Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.
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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.
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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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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
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.
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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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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
Idries Shah
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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