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Kingship (or government) is a combination of terror, strictness and kindness, and it is only maintained by (resorting to) these contradictory principles.

— Ziauddin Barani

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More quotes by Ziauddin Barani

“The low-born, who have been enrolled for practising the baser arts and the meaner professions, are capable only of vices…”

The den of the robbers was thus converted into a guard-house, and Musulmans and guardians of the way took the place of highway robbers.

‘Kingship is the army and the army is the kingship,’ wrote Barani, implying the central importance of a powerful army in the plunderous Muslim rule and conquest.

[Slaves, for instance, made good soldiers but] “they are of one group and one mind and there can be no permanent security against their revolt.”

Fatawa-i-Jahandari, pp.25-26. quoted from Lal, K. S (1992)

“In the year AH 689 (AD 1290), the Sultan led an army to Rantambhor… He took… Jhain, destroyed the idol temples, and broke and burned the idols…”

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

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The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

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Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ziauddin Barani (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.