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Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

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
People
Effectively
Secrets
Called
Secret
Understand
Experience
Many
Things
Withheld

More quotes by 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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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
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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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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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Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the veils which have to be dissolved in the mind.
Idries Shah
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Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
Idries Shah
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Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
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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If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
Idries Shah
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The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
Idries Shah
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People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.
Idries Shah
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If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!
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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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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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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You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.
Idries Shah
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It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.
Idries Shah
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Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
Idries Shah
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Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
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