Meditation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be. — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something. — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something? — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before. — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
Mediation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be. — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“People think that they think things, and they also think that they know things. They could usefully give some attention to the… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment. — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike,… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal. Interesting people can… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours.… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions; and not to try to avoid what is your lot.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung… — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Do not tell your secrets to everyone in this headquarters, Earth. We have surveyed it well. There was nobody to whom to entrust secrets.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
“Yes, the world is an illusion. But Truth is always being shown there.” — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day. — Idries Shah Copy Share Image
