Top 450 Idries Shah Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “It is not Sufism if it does not perform its function for you. A cloak is no longer a cloak if it does not keep a man warm.”

— Idries Shah

402. “Humility has to precede instruction.”

— Idries Shah

403. “When there is a true or useful thing, there is sure to be a counterfeit.”

— Idries Shah

404. “Recuerda que virtualmente todas las organizaciones que conoces funcionan gracias a tu codicia. Te atraen porque apelan a tu codicia.”

— Idries Shah

405. “The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.”

— Idries Shah

406. “Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.”

— Idries Shah

407. “You may not appreciate Sufism at first, but once you do you will appreciate it until the end of your days.”

— Idries Shah

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

— Idries Shah

409. “Haste is from the Devil.”

— Idries Shah

410. “Proverbs and truisms are for this reason dangerous, because they produce blindness or non-thought.”

— Idries Shah

411. “Quienes no pueden, prueban. Quienes pueden no tienen que hacerlo.”

— Idries Shah

412. “Trust is needed before lessons can be learnt.”

— Idries Shah

413. “Religion, for instance, cannot be accepted or rejected out of hand, until the student knows exactly what religion means.”

— Idries Shah

414. “The false student is the one whose eyes are fixed upon heaven because his feet are planted in mud.”

— Idries Shah

415. “Virtualmente todas las organizaciones que conoces funcionan esencialmente gracias a tu codicia.”

— Idries Shah

416. “Sufism is always systematised only for limited or transitory periods: because Sufism is primarly instrumental, not for enjoyment or display.”

— Idries Shah

417. “Dye your hair, certainly. But what can you do for your face?”

— Idries Shah

418. “Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do. Saadi teaches: ’when the generous promise, they perform.”

— Idries Shah

419. “He discards a quilt for fear of bugs.”

— Idries Shah

420. “Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because... they appeal to your greed.”

— Idries Shah

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

— Idries Shah

422. “Sufism is transmitted by means of the human exemplar, the teacher.”

— Idries Shah

423. “Pregunto acerca del cielo, pero la respuesta es acerca de una soga.”

— Idries Shah

424. “Most of the supposedly Sufi organizations, exercises and “orders” are in fact only of archaeological interest.”

— Idries Shah

425. “If you want to know what he’s like – reverse what his opponents say.”

— Idries Shah

426. “The question of divine knowledge is so deep that it is really known only to those who have it.”

— Idries Shah

427. “Sufis are not here to satisfy a demand. They exist to share what they have got. These two things are not always the same.”

— Idries Shah

428. “Sufism, the “secret tradition,” is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect.”

— Idries Shah

429. “Nothing can defile the Sufi, and he in fact purifies everything.” Abu-Turab al-Nakhsabi.”

— Idries Shah

430. “The clothes may vary, but the person is the same.”

— Idries Shah

431. “If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth.”

— Idries Shah

432. “Form is useful, but it is secondary.”

— Idries Shah

433. “The pathways into Sufic thinking are, it is traditionally said, almost as varied as the number of Sufis in existence.”

— Idries Shah

434. “Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.”

— Idries Shah

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

— Idries Shah

436. “Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed.”

— Idries Shah

437. “The Sufi is one who does what others do – when it is necessary. He is also one who does what others cannot do – when it is indicated.”

— Idries Shah

438. “But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH ‘things of the world’.”

— Idries Shah

439. “Sufism is experience, and hence not to be defined – imprisoned – in perennial, static categories.”

— Idries Shah

440. “Cautivar a una persona libre con amor es mejor que liberar a mil esclavos.”

— Idries Shah

441. “Now that I have found thee, I know that in the first step I took, I moved away from thee.”

— Idries Shah

442. “Unbelief and belief are both marching on His road, while both are saying, ‘He is one and He has no associates’.”

— Idries Shah

443. “Sufis can teach in any vehicle, whatever its name.”

— Idries Shah

444. “Why do people always wonder whether books are any good, without wondering whether they are themselves in a state to profit from them?”

— Idries Shah

445. “They asked Abboud of Omdurman: ‘Which is better, to be young or to be old?’ He said: ‘To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.”

— Idries Shah

446. “Although human mobility has increased, human assumptions have not kept pace. Human knowledge may have increased but human assumptions have remained fairly constant.”

— Idries Shah

447. “He paused and then showed me how he had been reading my mind all along. ‘You reflected that you had my reputation in the hollow of your hand. But why did you exalt at something everyone else also has? Do you not know that every ignoramus on earth can safely defame every single Sufi in the world. He will be believed by every other fearful suspicious, greedy person.”

— Idries Shah

448. “Now the fact is that social harmony and mental balance are essentials, just like food or other nutritions. But to glamorise these things and to distort their functions is to show lack of knowledge.”

— Idries Shah

449. “The harshness of a teacher is better than the reputed softness of the parent.”

— Idries Shah

450. “Never assume that any activity is anything more than attention-getting until you have excluded this element.”

— Idries Shah