Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply... For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.
– Alan Paton
God forgives us... Who am I not to forgive?
– Alan Paton
I envision someday a great, peaceful South Africa in which the world will take pride, a nation in which each of many different groups will be making its own creative contribution.
– Alan Paton
I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they (the whites of South Africa) have turned to loving, they will find we (the blacks) are turned to hating.
– Alan Paton
If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
– Alan Paton
The Afrikaner has nowhere to go, and that's why he would rather destroy himself than capitulate.
– Alan Paton
There is only one way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man.
– Alan Paton
To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.
– Alan Paton
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?
– Alan Paton
Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die?... Wise 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 Paton
You ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.