Quote

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.

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
Instrument
Instruments
Remain
Becomes
Belief
Learn
Lost
Really

More quotes by Idries Shah

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Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.
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If you are uninterested in what I say, there's an end to it. If you like what I say, please try to understand which previous influences have made you like it. If you like some of the things I say, and dislike others, you could try to understand why. If you dislike all I say, why not try to find out what formed your attitude?
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A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.
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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.
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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.
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If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
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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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One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
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When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
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When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.
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The impatient man is his own enemy he slams the door on his own progress.
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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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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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Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
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One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time.
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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.
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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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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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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A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.
Idries Shah