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.

- Idries Shah

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

- Idries Shah

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

- Idries Shah

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

- Idries Shah

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…

- Idries Shah

The more wakeful a man is to the things which surround him, the more asleep is he, and his waking is worse than his sleep.

- Idries Shah

Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

- Idries Shah

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

- Idries Shah

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

- Idries Shah