Idries Shah Thinking Quotations

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!

An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.

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.

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

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.

The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.

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

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.

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

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

When tomorrow comes, think tomorrow's thoughts.

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