I came alone and I go as a stranger. I do not know who I am, nor what I have been doing.
Politicians
Aurangzeb
Sixth Mughal emperor (1618-1707), known by the title Alamgir, "World-Seizer." In a 49-year reign he expanded the empire to its greatest territorial extent, codifying Islamic law in the Fatawa-i Alamgiri and restoring the jizya poll-tax on non-Muslims that Akbar had abolished a century earlier. A scholar-soldier who could recite the Quran from memory, he lived austerely in camp, sewing prayer caps and copying scripture to fund his own daily expenses. His twenty-six-year Deccan war ultimately drained the treasury and seeded the empire's collapse, and his religious policies remain a flashpoint between Indian and Pakistani historiography three centuries on.
View this figure's profile
Aurangzeb's Other Quotes
In all lands under Mughal control, never again should the officials allow a woman to be burnt.
You have revived the name of Timur by oppressing the poor with the jizya.
If the fight had ended fatally for me it would not have been a matter of shame. Death drops the curtain even on emperors; it is no dishonor.
King Aurangzib 'Alamgir stamped coins, in the world, like the bright full moon.
Related Quotes
For Being is, and non-Being is not.
-- Parmenides
Philosophy is the knowledge of beings qua beings.
-- Farabi
For whom emptiness works, everything works. For whom emptiness does not work, nothing works.
-- Nagarjuna
All things flow.
-- Heraclitus
Being determines consciousness.
-- Karl Marx
I think, therefore I am.
-- René Descartes