But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.

The more you look at 'common knowledge', the more you realise that it is more likely to be common than it is to be knowledge. No real knowledge is common.

A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung to death by scorpions.

It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.

The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.

We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before.