Top 450 Idries Shah Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 7 of 10

301. “Exaggeration is a standard peculiarity of man. To deprecate is often a form of exaggeration which people do not notice, because it appears to be its opposite.”

— Idries Shah

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

— Idries Shah

303. “Los grandes hombres son grandes hasta que lo saben. Los santos son santos hasta que lo saben.”

— Idries Shah

304. “There is something in man which can detect real love. We rub it out, or muffle it, by substitute-love.”

— Idries Shah

305. “No surgeon can treat the wounds of the tongue.”

— Idries Shah

306. “In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.”

— Idries Shah

307. “Hit your hand on a stone and expect it to hurt.”

— Idries Shah

308. “Make mankind your dwelling place.”

— Idries Shah

309. “But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.”

— Idries Shah

310. “Fettered feet in the presence of friends is better than living in a garden with strangers.”

— Idries Shah

311. “People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn’t got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the knowledge.”

— Idries Shah

312. “You cannot learn more until you can learn more.”

— Idries Shah

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

— Idries Shah

314. “You must improve yourself on a higher level if you are to be able to help people, and not just weep over them.”

— Idries Shah

315. “Rumi speaks of people who rely upon the written word as sometimes being no more than donkeys laden with books.”

— Idries Shah

316. “If you really want to learn, do not be surprised if someone tries to teach you. And do not lightly reject the method.”

— Idries Shah

317. “They say: ‘Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.”

— Idries Shah

318. “Knowledge of yourself may involve, if we are learning at the present time, a knowledge of the way of thinking of your society and to realise that you are probably its product, and that this knowledge can be attained in fact by such anthropological and psychological observations made by the Sufis in the course of their teaching how to pursue new and more promising extra perspectives.”

— Idries Shah

319. “Los corazones de los nobles son las tumbas de las confidencias.”

— Idries Shah

320. “Enviar un beso por mensajero.”

— Idries Shah

321. “One day we will all wear a garment which has no pockets...”

— Idries Shah

322. “Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: ‘What did you do that?’ Junaid said: ‘I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life.”

— Idries Shah

323. “I am an idol worshipper; for I understand what idol worship means, and the idolater does not.”

— Idries Shah

324. “There is a saying that, according to what a person’s mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil’s face.”

— Idries Shah

325. “Sufism is the essence of all religions.”

— Idries Shah

326. “What you are seeking in your retreat, I see clearly in every road and alleyway.”

— Idries Shah

327. “You make me a sinner if you stop me giving you hospitality.”

— Idries Shah

328. “Sufismo es aquello que consigue llevar el Conocimiento Superior al hombre.”

— Idries Shah

329. “La independencia prematura es la hija de la vanidad.”

— Idries Shah

330. “Hay tantos caminos hacia la verdad como almas humanas.”

— Idries Shah

331. “The teacher is one who abandons ceremonial and religious display and social appearances, and concentrates on real development.”

— Idries Shah

332. “You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.”

— Idries Shah

333. “Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition.”

— Idries Shah

334. “The liar has a bad memory.”

— Idries Shah

335. “People generally deal with situations by means of assumptions.”

— Idries Shah

336. “From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful, pardon: from the poor, sins.”

— Idries Shah

337. “People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more.”

— Idries Shah

338. “He is the completed Man who, from his completeness, performs, with his Mastership, the work of a slave.”

— Idries Shah

339. “To bind one free man with love is better than to release a thousand slaves.”

— Idries Shah

340. “Are you ignorant enough to expect horsemanship from blacksmiths?”

— Idries Shah

341. “Until you can understand illogicality, and the meaningfulness of it, shun the Sufis except for limited, precise, self-evident services.”

— Idries Shah

342. “A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information.”

— Idries Shah

343. “If you are covetous, you are a prisoner: If you are greedy, you will never be filled.”

— Idries Shah

344. “Those who can’t, try: those who can, don’t have to.”

— Idries Shah

345. “Of whom can we think well when it is believed that if nothing bad is done to you, this has been a kindness?”

— Idries Shah

346. “What you have to learn is how to find the unworldly in everything.”

— Idries Shah

347. “What is known to be tyranny to the superior man may appear to be justice to the ordinary one.”

— Idries Shah

348. “Why did I do such-and-such a thing?′ is all very well. But what about ‘How otherwise could I have done it?”

— Idries Shah

349. “When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.”

— Idries Shah

350. “When you feel least interested in following the Way which you have entered, this may be the time when it is most appropriate for you.”

— Idries Shah