If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn’t concern the central issues, it wouldn’t be worth publishing.
ALAN PATONIf you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn’t concern the central issues, it wouldn’t be worth publishing.
ALAN PATONWhen I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for?
ALAN PATONThe sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.
ALAN PATONCry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved.
ALAN PATONThe Afrikaner has nowhere to go, and thats why he would rather destroy himself than capitulate.
ALAN PATONCry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end.
ALAN PATONWhat 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?
ALAN PATONAnd money is not something to go mad about …
ALAN PATONAnd man’s destruction of his own environment, is to exemplify in your own lives man’s humanity to man and man’s reverence for the place in which he lives.
ALAN PATONLet me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.
ALAN PATONThere are voices crying what must be done, a hundred, a thousand voices.
ALAN PATONSomething deep is touched here, something that is good and deep.
ALAN PATONMoney is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.
ALAN PATONWise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.
ALAN PATONThe Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law.
ALAN PATONThe only way in which one can make endurable man’s inhumanity to man.
ALAN PATON