Top 450 Idries Shah Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the “veils” which have to be dissolved in the mind.”

— Idries Shah

102. “The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service.”

— Idries Shah

103. “But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.”

— Idries Shah

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

— Idries Shah

105. “One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.”

— Idries Shah

106. “Learn how much knowledge is needed before we can see how ignorant we are.”

— Idries Shah

107. “People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man.”

— Idries Shah

108. “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.”

— Idries Shah

109. “If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?”

— Idries Shah

110. “If you want to strengthen an enemy and make him exult – hate him.”

— Idries Shah

111. “Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.”

— Idries Shah

112. “No practice exists in isolation.”

— Idries Shah

113. “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.”

— Idries Shah

114. “Like calls to like, truth to truth and deceit to deceit.”

— Idries Shah

115. “The thief who has not been caught is a king.”

— Idries Shah

116. “In the distorting mirror of your mind, an angel can seem to have a devil’s face.”

— Idries Shah

117. “Hazrat Ali, in a saying attributed to him, says: ‘Man is in disguise, covered by his tongue’.”

— Idries Shah

118. “You will never reach Mecca, I fear: for you are on the road to Turkestan.”

— Idries Shah

119. “The great poet Hafiz says that you should dye your prayer-carpet with wine if your teacher tells you to do so.”

— Idries Shah

120. “I ask about the sky, but the answer is about a rope.”

— Idries Shah

121. “A man must be a Solomon before his magical ring will work.”

— Idries Shah

122. “However fast you run, or however skilfully, you can’t run away from your own feet.”

— Idries Shah

123. “El mentiroso tiene mala memoria.”

— Idries Shah

124. “Opportunity’s precious, and time is a sword.”

— Idries Shah

125. “Patience is the food of understanding.”

— Idries Shah

126. “If you do not understand, you cannot love. You can only imagine that you love.”

— Idries Shah

127. “La confianza es necesaria antes de que se puedan aprender lecciones.”

— Idries Shah

128. “Nothing cheap without reason.”

— Idries Shah

129. “Because sugar is not arsenic, many graves are full.”

— Idries Shah

130. “The fruit of timidity is neither gain nor loss.”

— Idries Shah

131. “One day the cub will become a wolf, even if it has been reared among the sons of man.”

— Idries Shah

132. “All life is struggle, says the Sufi, but the struggle must be a coherent one. The average man is struggling against too many things all at once. If a confused and incomplete person makes money, or becomes a professional success, he still remains a confused and incomplete person.”

— Idries Shah

133. “La gente que no puede confiar son ellos mismos no confiables, y por lo tanto, no se les puede confiar cosas importantes.”

— Idries Shah

134. “Remedy Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it. Hazrat Ali.”

— Idries Shah

135. “Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.”

— Idries Shah

136. “La Oportunidad es preciosa, y el tiempo es una espada.”

— Idries Shah

137. “A yellow dog is brother to the jackal.”

— Idries Shah

138. “You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.”

— Idries Shah

139. “The Sufi saying has it: “God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!”

— Idries Shah

140. “Tu deber es hacer lo mejor que puedas. Sin embargo, no por haber nacido tienes derecho a prevalecer.”

— Idries Shah

141. “Humility is a teacher of itself. It is learnt by means of its practise.”

— Idries Shah

142. “To send a kiss by messenger.”

— Idries Shah

143. “Take the straight path, even if it is long: marry no widow, even if she is a houri.”

— Idries Shah

144. “La lengua es el mejor masajista de cejas fruncidas.”

— Idries Shah

145. “Sufi Teachers are not, as you might hope, people who make you feel peace and harmony.”

— Idries Shah

146. “Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality.”

— Idries Shah

147. “Whoever has not first dug a well, should not steal a minaret.”

— Idries Shah

148. “Before garden, vine or grape was in the world,” writes one, “our soul was drunken with immortal wine.”

— Idries Shah

149. “Be kind to the hawk and harm the sparrow.”

— Idries Shah

150. “No problem is too difficult to be solved by a theoretician.”

— Idries Shah