Therefore, make them your chief companions in privacy as well as in public.

Therefore, make them your chief companions in privacy as well as in public. Then, more preferable among them for you should be those who openly speak better truths before you and who support you least in those of your actions which Allah does not approve in His friends, even though they may be according to your wishes.

Associate yourself with God-fearing and truthful people; then educate them, so that they should not praise you or please you by reason of an action you did not perform, because an excess of praise produces pride and drives you near haughtiness. The virtuous and the vicious should not be in equal position before you because this means dissuasion of the virtuous from virtue and persuasion of the vicious to vice. Keep everyone in the position which is his.

You should know that the most conducive thing for the good impression of the ruler on his subjects is that he…