Idries Shah Quotes

“My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought.
Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.”
― Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams

“If you will not reprove yourself,’ Saadi says, ‘you will not welcome reproof from another.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“The intellect is not sovereign: knowledge is.”
― Idries Shah, A Perfumed Scorpion: A Way to the Way

“The worst of sages is a visitor of princes; the best of princes is a visitor of sages.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)”
― Idries Shah, Sufi Thought and Action: An Anthology of Important Papers

“He who sleeps on the Road will lose either his hat or his head.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“SOVEREIGNTY
Sovereignty is a wind of change.
(Hariri)”
― Idries Shah

“Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud.”
― Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

“Man is the microcosm, creation the macrocosm — the unity. All comes from One.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Superior experience and knowledge will be made available to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth, capacity and earning of it.”
― Idries Shah

“[Idries Shah advised that if] the question is asked repeatedly and clearly: will it be healed or won’t it be? Can it be healed, or can’t it be? – a vibration is set up which is the right code for the computer. Thus the computer will become aware that the skin is damaged and will intervene to repair – since this is its function. Provided always that communication with it is coded in the correct way. (The Steganographer 6)”
― Oliver Hoare

“Quien se duerma en el Camino, perderá el sombrero o la cabeza.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Si no te reprochas a ti mismo”, dice Saadi, “no aceptarás el reproche ajeno.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Many a “learned” man is destroyed by ignorance and by the learning which is of no use to him’ (Hadrat Ahmed ibn Mahsud, the Sufi).”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Muchos eruditos son destruidos por la ignorancia y por el conocimiento que no saben utilizar.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“Someone says that I haven’t taught him anything that he can remember. He can’t understand yet that that’s precisely what I am aiming at…”
― Idries Shah, Observations

“Alguien dice que no le he enseñado nada que pueda recordar. Aún no puede comprender que eso es precisamente a lo que estoy apuntando…”
― Idries Shah, Observations

“El hombre es el microcosmos, la creación, el macrocosmos: la unidad. Todo procede del Uno.”
― Idries Shah, The Sufis

“El intelecto no es soberano: el conocimiento lo es.”
― Idries Shah, A Perfumed Scorpion: A Way to the Way

“Only later – much, much later, and after losing all hope and undergoing a seemingly interminable Dark Night of the Soul – would Louie begin to see how Shah’s own work tied in with others. Not only among Sufis, nor in the general fields of spirituality and mysticism, nor in the work of Shah’s own family, friends of Shah, and friends of friends of Shah, and people who quoted people quoting Shah, but in diverse fields and in the town’s marketplace, mucky alleyways and smoke-clouded taverns of everyday life. That was a whole new vista, a continent beyond Shah’s own island – vast, exotic, and apparently self-contained as it had been, and yet not all and everything. Looking back, this wonderful caravanserai had been a very necessary, and much loved, step or two along the way.”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“As well as this, there were of course many sceptics and detractors, not only of Shah but of his students and his would-be or wanna-be students. They’d say things like “You’ve been studying for – what? – 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And where has it got got you, eh? Eh? Nowhere.” And there really was no answer to that, other than to simply try to show a good example, and hope that some might sense subtle signs of progress having been made. But no: they wanted to see Gandalf with his whizz-bangs. Unlike Rabia, we couldn’t magically produce an onion out of thin air – an incontrovertible act – and later retort: “What? Do you think that God is a greengrocer, or something?”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“Remember that wisdom is not a destination, but a way of travelling.”
― Idries Shah Media, Idries Shah Remembered

“I think that this idea, that the materials and self work can take you far enough for other things to kick in, was [Idries] Shah’s innovation, his “big gamble”, to fit a 21st century community of which very few would actually have physical contact with a living teacher.”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“At length, however, and that length was measured in more decades than he chose to recall, he began to get sick of all the “Beginning to Begin” and the “Thinking How to Think”. This, even “Seeing How to See” and “Knowing How to Know” were all very well. But surely the path had to be about “Becoming How to Be”, the goal being “Being How to Be”?”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“This, then, was Night School. And, other than [Idries] Shah and his work colleague, the only other person Louie knew by name at that time, since she had made a special point of him seeing her name neatly embroidered across the neckline of her clothes, and spelling it out in a dream, was Eugenie.

It was, perhaps, a play on the words “You Genie”. And for the first time, Louie did wonder whether or not this might be the lady behind his inner voice, whom he’d previously pencilled in as “X” for want of a better name.”
― H.M. Forester, Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul

“Man is a myth-maker. Myth, when manipulated by unregenerates, is an even more effective man-maker.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“At our meetings we listened to tapes of [Idries] Shah’s talks. Each tape began with the sentence: It is not by luck or accident that you are here. (The Steganographer 6)”
― Oliver Hoare

“As in a harmonised group, once this ‘electronic’ link is established between people, a new person can be introduced, and as long as he or she can orientate him-or-herself correctly to the activity, what has taken many years for the group to learn can be picked up very quickly. For this to be possible it is essential to avoid hierarchies developing, because the attitude of feeling more important as a result of having been around longer makes this transmission impossible. (The Steganographer 6)”
― Oliver Hoare

“People speak of spirituality,’ he says, ‘but few people would know it, no matter how often they talk about it, even if they found it in their soup.”
― Idries Shah Media, Idries Shah Remembered