Life & Wisdom Quote by Aesop

Permission is the quiet engine of exploitation. Aesop’s line is blunt almost to the point of tautology, and that’s the trick: it reads like common sense, then hardens into a warning about how power actually moves. The first clause, “If you allow,” places agency where people in unequal situations are often told they have none. It’s not victim-blaming so much as a survival lesson from a world where the weak rarely get fairness and the strong rarely need excuses. Consent, in this framing, isn’t a moral nicety; it’s a strategic boundary.

The second half, “they will use you for theirs,” lands like a closed door. There’s no promise of reciprocity, no fantasy that good intentions will be rewarded. Aesop strips away the sentimental notion that being useful earns you care. People with “purposes” are already running a plan; if you don’t set terms, you become raw material. The repetition of “use you” is deliberately dehumanizing, turning a person into an instrument to show how quickly relationships can become transactional when leverage is lopsided.

Context matters: Aesop’s fables were moral technology for everyday life, passed through societies built on hierarchy and, often, slavery. In that environment, the safest guidance wasn’t “trust people,” but “recognize incentives.” The subtext is clear-eyed cynicism: kindness without boundaries isn’t virtue, it’s availability. The intent is preventative, teaching readers to negotiate their value before someone else assigns it.