John Boyne Quotes

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.

Whether the institution to be defended is slavery, political absolutism, or the absolutism of the head of a family, we are always expected to judge of it from its best instances; and we are presented with pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other

This idea of walls, segregation, labels, and 'You against us' and 'We are superior and you are inferior.' Which people are legitimate? Which relationships are legitimate or not? Who declares that under which authority? These are things that are hugely important.

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

I think it is the easiest mentality for a human being to be either colonized or to colonize. The structure of either the slave or the master seems to be the simplest and the most relaxing one to slip into. Either you are a slave, and you don't have to think for yourself, or you're a master, and you don't have to work for yourself.

There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave.

I remember being taught my place.

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

In the South they don't mind how close I get, so long as I don't get too big. In the North they don't mind how big I get, so long as I don't get too close.

The primary object of every elite, or ruling class, is to maintain its own power and privilege.

Whenever there are enclosing walls, there are abuses behind them.

Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?

Every organism, every human being, must conquer or serve.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four.

Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends.

… we clung to the belief... that our white skin made us "better" than all other people. And this belief comforted us, for we felt worthless and weak when confronted with authorities who had cheapened nearly all we held dear, except our skin color. There, in the land of Epidermis, every one of us was a little king.

Doesn't make any difference who we are or what we are, there's always somebody to look down on.

How many, even of the better sort, would choose to be slaves to those above them, provided they might exercise an arbitrary and tyrannical rule over all below them?

I think there's always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can't feel that they have any hero qualities unless there's someone beneath them.

I think the first time 'white' was used was in the 1600s. Generally, we were described by where we came from... All of a sudden, this word 'white' came through, and now everyone is going for their own sense of power... to figure out who's on top.

In this world, people are violent toward people that they feel are conceptualized as smaller than them. It's an impulse that we have.

That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.