book of aphorisms by a Pakistani lawyer
Autocracy
- If you speak behind a podium, some will agree with you, but if you speak behind the barrel of a gun, everyone will agree with you.
- Law can make any deviation legal. It is a matter of fiat backed by force and habitual compliance. Only moral justification can render it legitimate.
- Oligarchy is force as a matter of course.
- People under constant dictatorships remain trapped in the vicious circle of despotism, corruption and favouritism repeated by despotism, corruption and favouritism.
- It is a sovereign prerogative of the military in the third world countries to topple civilian democracies, as it likes and when it likes.
- He is a deluded dictator who thinks the people applaud him for usurpation of power. The day he really believes this, as frequently happens, he will start relaxing his coercive grip on power and that will be the beginning of his end.
- Whenever martial law is declared, the politicians, being the champions of democracy and rule oflaw, either quit the country to live in comfortable climes or play possum until the auspicious times.
- When the men in uniform become thinkers, they enforce uniform inertia of thought consonant with their calling.
- Conversation with a man in uniform is typical, topical and entropical.
- A dictator lies uneasy on his bed of bayonets, which keeps rattling under him.
- Dictators do not believe in forms of government, good or bad. They believe in firm government, good or bad.
- The only de-militarized zones in a militarized country are the graveyards, where the civilians can be buried with equal status without distinction.
- Habit of obedience makes a dictator .
- In slavery, fear of the strong restrains a slave; in dictatorship, both fear and habit
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Rasheed A. Akhund
Author
About Rasheed Akhund
In every family, if one is lucky, there appears a figure so marvellously singular, so steeped in wisdom and warmth that he becomes a sort of personal North Star. Rasheed Ahmed Akhund was such a man; measured, principled and enigmatic. A man who, like the best of us, lived not for show but for substance. He belonged to a dwindling class of men who thought deeply, spoke sparingly and forgave quietly.
Subjects
“A person cannot say that reality is above human comprehension because, being human, he cannot know that there is anything above his comprehension"
- on Philosophy
“lf you attempt to prove existence of God with cold logic, you will land him in contradictions. If you feel him warmly, he is universal love and sense of perfection.”
- on God
Rasheed A. Akhund
Book of aphorisms by a Pakistani lawyer
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