Training the Janissary

The Ottoman system deliberately took slaves and made them ministers of state. It took boys from the sheep-run and the plough-tail and made them courtiers and the husbands of princesses; it took young men whose ancestors had borne the Christian name for centuries, and made them rulers in the greatest of Mohammadan states, and soldiers and generals in invincible armies whose chief joy was to beat down the Cross and elevate the Crescent. ... Grandly disregarding the fabric of fundamental customs which is called "human nature", and those religious and social prejudices which are thought to be almost as deep as life itself, the Ottoman system took children forever from their parents, discouraged family cares among its members through their most active years, allowed them no certain hold upon property, gave them no definite promise that their sons and daughters would profit by their success and sacrifice, raised and lowered them with no regard for ancestry or previous distinction, taught them a strange law, ethics, and religion, and ever kept them conscious of a sword raised above their heads which might put an end at any moment to a brilliant career along a matchless path of human glory. (p. 210)

...

It is always the way of the Turks, whenever they come into possession of a man of uncommonly good parts, to rejoice and be exceedingly glad, as though they had found a pearl of great price. And, in bringing out all that there is in him, they leave nothing undone that labour and thought can do--especially where they recognize military aptitude. Our Western way is different indeed! In the West, if we come into possession of a good dog or hawk or horse, we are delighted, and we spare nothing in our efforts to bring the creature to the highest perfection of which its kind is capable. In the case of a man, however--supposing that we happen to come upon a man of signal endowments--we do not take anything like the same pains, and we do not consider that his education is particularly our business. So we Westerners obtain many sorts of pleasure and service  from a well-broken-in horse, dog and hawk, while the Turks obtain from a man whose character has been cultivated by education the vastly greater return that is afforded by the vast superiority and preeminence of human nature over the rest of the animal kingdom.

(pp. 211-212)

as quoted in Arnold Toynbee's "A Study of History: Volume One"