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.

The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.

When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.

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.

To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.

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.

... when we are talking about 'Christians' and 'Moslems' we must first make sure that we are talking about people who have an idea, which should be more or less correct, as to what the other is supposed to believe and what he is expected to do as a consequence of that belief.