Idries Shah Quotes

Sometimes the ignorant are among the most educated.

Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?

The truth is perilous never to the true, Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, And to the false, error and truth alike, Error is worse than ignorance.

To the ignorant, even the words of wise seem foolishness.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

They are so knowing, that they know nothing.

Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.

In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

A wise man poor Is like a sacred book that ’s never read,— To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead. This age thinks better of a gilded fool Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.

It's one thing to be innocent and another thing to be naive or willfully ignorant.

Well isn’t that one thing you’re all the more wise for? Age has taught you something. It seems to me that you know the big secret. That nobody knows what’s going on