Psychology Quotes by Idries Shah

“The door of illumination is open to those for whom other doors are closed.”

— Idries Shah

“Most people, whatever their opinions and protestations, do not want to learn.”

— Idries Shah

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

— Idries Shah

“Saadi: Be a true renouncer, (zahid) and [you can even] ware satin.”

— Idries Shah

“Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)”

— Idries Shah

“Take the wheat, not the measure in which it is contained”

— Idries Shah

Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.

— Idries Shah

“One of the great Sufis said: 'A saint is a saint unless he knows that he is one.”

— Idries Shah

“Our heads are filled with ‘knowledge’, a knowledge that in some areas pre-empts our seeing anything at all.”

— Idries Shah

“When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.”

— Idries Shah

“Forms are vehicles and instruments, and vehicles and instruments cannot be called good or bad without context.”

— Idries Shah

“The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds”

— Idries Shah

“Any society which enjoins its members to adhere to both of these (politeness and truth) is a fraud.”

— Idries Shah

“There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.”

— Idries Shah

“When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge”

— Idries Shah

“Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic…

— Idries Shah

“Show a man too many camels' bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize…

— Idries Shah

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be…

— Idries Shah

“The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn.”

— Idries Shah

“Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.”

— Idries Shah

“Remedy Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register…

— Idries Shah

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

— Idries Shah

“if... says: 'Do not be greedy, be generous', you may inwardly interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a…

— Idries Shah

“One of the basic Sufi needs is to enable people to see themselves as they really are.”

— Idries Shah

“When humility is exercised, people begin to realise that they do not, as it were, exist at all.”

— Idries Shah

“The Sufis regard systems which treat everyone alike as mechanical and degenerate.”

— Idries Shah

“There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a…

— Idries Shah

“Presence and Absence A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence: I do not know. What I do know…

— Idries Shah

The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.

— Idries Shah

“It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.”

— Idries Shah

“Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel…

— Idries Shah

“...most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.”

— Idries Shah

“Greed harms you: generosity helps you. This is why it has been said: 'Greed is the mother of incapacity'.”

— Idries Shah

“Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to the external world to which all forms belong.”

— Idries Shah

Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.

— Idries Shah

“Has it not occurred to you that, conversely, other people do not have your difficulties because they do not react as you…

— Idries Shah

“Poor greedy one, wherever he runs He's after food, and death is after him. (Saadi)”

— Idries Shah

“Remember the proverb: 'A sign is enough for the alert, but a thousand counsels are not enough for the negligent.”

— Idries Shah

“Laziness is always your fault. It is the sign that a man has persevered in uselessness for too long.”

— Idries Shah