book of aphorisms by a Pakistani lawyer
History
- The Christian meek of Europe inherited the earth with colonization, slavery and imperialism.
- History is what the posterity thinks history is in hindsight.
- An historian discovers the past, puts the present in focus and indicates the prophecy for the future.
- Those who passionately believe in the past are condemned to relive it.
- The history of civilizations is replete with barbarism and butchery spurred by greed and dogma with interludes of peace and prosperity in which cultures flourished.
- Man is the only sentient being, who refuses to learn from experience.
- History imparts the dignity of truth to demeaning lies propagated by the conquering nations against the conquered, because history• is written by the historians of the former, such as the touted burden of the imperialist white man for improving the lots of black, brown and yellow races, which, in truth, was ladden with slavery, syphilis and opium. Now such propaganda lies are broadcast daily by CNN and BBC about Iraqi resistance, concealing Western occupying force’s atrocities against civilians in Iraq.
- Historically, conflicts between nations have been resolved by might rather than by right. The weak and vanquished cling on to what is right; the strong and victors disdain it.
- Civilizations have been built by the powerful upon the slavery and pain of the vanquished.
- The interpretation of history is an attempt of the present to comprehend its past in conformity with the expectations of its future.
- Those who do not learn the lessons from their past become pathetic lessons for the future.
- While the Europeans were inventing science and acquiring power over the nature in the 18th century, we, in the East, were engaged in exploring mysticism of self-in-nothingness of Hindu, Chinese and Muslim varieties.
- Happy are the people whose names do not appear even in parenthesis in history. They were spared the heroes who would have led them to the glories of gory wars.
- The victims of yesterday become the oppressors of today such as the persecuted Jews of Europe in Israel. Man’s inequity to man repeats itself without end.
- To establish peace in the world, lethal armaments are made and sold to strike the balance of terror.
- A revolutionary wants no future of the past.
- Mounbatten, the last viceroy of imperial India, was vice for Pakistan and royal for India.
- History is often the tragedy of the weak and tyranny of the strong.
- History is what the historian decides to relate about the past.
- India and Pakistan are two divided countries united in a common heritage of intolerance.
- In the synthetic civilization of some distant future, human babies will be born and bred by the dutiful robots with interjections of cooing noises from the indifferent genetic parents.
- Secret of the supremacy of Western civilization is secularism to take decisions by the light of reason alone.23. Economic, cultural and military subjugation of a minority of a country is a sophisticated form of slavery. Apart from the material deprivations, it takes away the dignity of the subjugated.
- The immediate method to eliminate ferocity from the semi-savage tribes is to bring urgent economic prosperity to them, as the Anglo-American oil cartel did with the rugged desert
- Arabs in Saudi Arabia. But Afghanistan is unfortunate in this respect, because it does not possess readily exploitable natural resources to enrich the West, so that the falling economic crumbs could be picked up by the Afghans for a settled life to begin with.
- There is no future for those who live in the past.
- The solemn and tedious make history and the sensitive and lively create literature.
- Hardly 15% per cent of the world’s population is economically prosperous and possesses 98% per cent of its weapons of mass destruction. Why should these powerful and opulent people bother about the misery, squalor and pain of the wretched and deprived of the earth, when the rich and strong can easily bully or bomb them into abject submission to work for their prosperity. The 21st Century is going to be the most benighted in the known history for relentless subjugation and exploitation of the vast and incessantly breeding poor masses of mankind for economic benefits of a few powerful countries of the West.
- Greed for wealth and power has played pivotal role in the history to conquer nations, devastate cultures and unleash demons of violence and oppression.
- The verdict of history is useless to the dead of the past, in-elevant to the unborn of the future and unimpressive to the adamants of the present.
- Napoleon is the glory of Prance and an incubus for the English, as SalahuddinAyubi of Egypt was for the 12th century Christian crusaders, who had come to conquer Muslim land from Europe. At the crossroads of history, a hero of one nation is the devil of another.
- It is convenient and secure to live by the antiquated and spent truth of ritual and tradition. Generations pass without the drowsy people thinking for themselves; and those innovators are denounced and hounded who invite them to think. The jolt comes, when the uninhibited and vigorous people, with superior ideas, new ways or new power, crush in to subjugate them. History, however, is a witness that the jolted mostly sank back in the stupor, like the Muslim countries all over the world, without exception, including Turkey in the 19th century.
- Mystery thickens, when history thins, in criminal investigation.
- Twentieth century was the most inhuman and deadly century in the history of mankind, in which the beastliness of man reached the nadir of savagery in kil1ing millions of innocent men, women and children in the holocaust, only because they were Jews, belonging to a different religion and race.
- Reason for the woes of the world is that man cannot live by reason alone.
- The purpose of knowledge is attainment of power, whether on nature or man, because it is human nature to dominate. History is a march of events to locate which people progressed in succession on the road from slingshot to super bomb.
- History is not the unfolding of benign reason. It is the unveiling of dark passions of doom and distruction by the cunning reason and brutal force.
Rasheedakhund.com
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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