It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
Interpretation
Exploiting others for personal gain is morally unacceptable.
This quote by Alan Paton emphasizes the ethical implications of acquiring wealth or resources at the expense of others. It highlights the concept of exploitation, suggesting that true development and progress cannot be justified if they result in harm or disadvantage to others, urging a moral reassessment of how we pursue our personal and collective ambitions.
In practice
In a discussion about corporate ethics, one might cite this quote to illustrate the dangers of profit-driven practices.
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.
Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.
Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.
The way to God is the opposite to that of the world. And to few, very few, are given to have God and mammon at the same time.
The trouble with you and me, is that we don't live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen.
We find that the Romans owed the conquest of the world to no other cause than continual military training, exact observance of discipline in their camps, and unwearied cultivation of the other arts of war.
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
When I die I won't go to heaven or hell; there will just be nothingness.
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