Top 104 Quotes & Sayings by Idries Shah

If you give what can be taken, you are not really giving. Take what you are given, not what you want to be given. Give what cannot be taken.

Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.

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.

When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.

The more you look at 'common knowledge', the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge. No real knowledge is common.

Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?

When Fortune knocks, open the door,' they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?

You have not forgotten to remember; You have remembered to forget. But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember - and generally more practical.

Knowledge is something which you can use. Belief is something which uses you.

Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.

Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.

You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.

It is the message, not the man, which is important to the Sufis.

It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.

The word 'choice' is a fraud while people choose only what they have been taught to choose.

Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal. Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.

One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.

When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.

People used to play with toys. Now the toys play with them.

The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service

When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it.

If you can turn a murderer into a mere thief, you are making progress.

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.

Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?

From time to time ponder whether you are unconsciously saying: 'Truth is what I happen to be thinking at this moment.

When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

The chicken had his wish, and was magically transformed into a fox. Then he found that he could not digest grain.

Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.

History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.

Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.

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?

Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.

You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.

If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult - hate him.

Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.

A motto of the human race: Let me do what I like, and give me approval as well.

A man who believes the word of a donkey in preference to my word does not deserve to be lent anything.

To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.

The proverb says that 'The answer to a fool is silence'. Observation, however, indicates that almost any other answer will have the same effect in the long run.

The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.

It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.

Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.

If a pot can multiply. One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a neighbour, who was giving a feast. The neighbour returned them, together with one extra one – a very tiny pot. 'What is this?' asked Nasrudin. 'According to law, I have given you the offspring of your property which was born when the pots were in my care,' said the joker. Shortly afterwards Nasrudin borrowed his neighbour's pots, but did not return them. The man came round to get them back. 'Alas!' said Nasrudin, 'they are dead. We have established, have we not, that pots are mortal?'.

If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!

Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.

The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.

A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.

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.

There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.

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

There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.

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

You are adrift while you still think that a means is an end.

Meditation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be.

One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.

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

If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?

The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.

A real secret is something which only one person knows.