Ulrika Eriksson > Ulrika's Quotes

“If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Right time, right place, right people equals success.
Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.”
― Idries Shah

“You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.”
― Idries Shah

“Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“Three Things
Three things cannot be retrieved:
The arrow once sped from the bow
The word spoken in haste
The missed opportunity.

(Ali the Lion, Caliph of Islam, son-in-law of Mohammed the Prophet),”
― Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

“For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.”
― Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

“As the man was bundled into an armoured police van, he turned and shouted: ‘Don’t waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!’

I stood there thinking. He was right. Ours is a society of followers, trapped by an island mentality.”
― Tahir Shah, The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca

“Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
― Walker Evans

“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
― Walker Evans

“It is not 'Have I got a chance?' It is more often: 'Have I seen my chance?”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“MAN: Kick him-he'll forgive you. Flatter him-he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he'll hate you”
― Idries Shah

“The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.”
― Tahir Shah, The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca

“We have almost reached a point where if one values democracy, one is denounced as reactionary. I think that this will be one of the attitudes that will be found most fascinating to historians of the future. For one thing, the young people who cultivate this attitude towards democracy are usually those who have never experienced its opposite: people who've lived under tyranny, value democracy.”
― Doris Lessing, Prisons We Choose to Live Inside

“I never realized imagining could change reality”
― Tahir shah, Daydreams of an Octopus & Other Stories

“Oh! To be beyond the pale once more, out of civilization into savagery? I abhor civilization!”
― Isabella Bird

“I still vote civilization a nuisance, society a humbug and all conventionality a crime.”
― Isabella Bird

“These days a scientist is not supposed to detect intelligence in the miracle of cosmos or beauty in a bird of paradise, though he's always quick to be excited by beauty in his own theories.”
― Jason Elliot, The Madhouse: A Fantasy Corresponding To Truth

“The devious manipulation of sheep, otherwise known as politics.”
― Jason Elliot, The Madhouse: A Fantasy Corresponding To Truth