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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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Idries Shah
Age: 72 †
Born: 1924
Born: June 16
Died: 1996
Died: November 23
Author
Collector Of Fairy Tales
Teacher
Writer
Simla
Arkon Daraul
Credulous
Criticise
Analytical
Learn
Things

More quotes by Idries Shah

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Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.
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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
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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.
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Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.
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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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A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
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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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
Idries Shah
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
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
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The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.
Idries Shah
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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.
Idries Shah
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
Idries Shah
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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
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
Idries Shah
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Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
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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From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.
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 tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.
Idries Shah