Quotes About Injustice

There's something horribly unfair about dying in the middle of a good story, before you have a chance to see how it all comes out. Of course, I suppose everyone ALWAYS dies in the middle of a good story, in a sense. Your own story. Or the story of your grandchildren. Death is a raw deal for narrative junkies.

Yeah, things are better for blacks and women and gays, but it was the blacks and women and gays that did it, not fuck-ups like this bunch. Whites and straights came along to give help, all right, after the blacks said 'enough' and got their heads busted, and it's the same for the gays and the women. The whites and straights, they control things, and they could have changed it anytime.

The worst kind of tyrant was the one who once had been the victim.

I was becoming acutely aware […] that Negroes rarely were allowed to be experts about themselves; others always knew more, wrote or said more, or at least what they said or wrote got around more and certainly was given more credence.

It must be pretty awful for a white man to learn that one of the things wrong with this society is that it is not based on dollars directly or alone, but dollars denied men who are black so dollars can go into the pockets of men who are white. It must make white men ponder a kind of weakness that will make them deny work to black men so that work can be done by men who are white.

When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone.

And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?

Those people... well, they're not people at all, Bruno

There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.

We're accustomed to the older generation looking down on the younger and telling them that they know nothing of the world. But things are rather out of kilter now, aren't they? It is your generation who understands the inhumanity of man, not ours. It's boys like you who have to live with what you have seen and what you have done. You've become the generation of response. While your elders can only look in your direction and wonder.

Most men are not as smart as women and yet they continue to hold all the power. They fear a change of the world order.

Bruno had a pain in his stomach and he could feel something growing inside him, something that when it worked its way up from the lowest depths inside him to the outside world would either make him shout and scream that the whole thing was wrong and unfair and a big mistake for which somebody would pay one of these days, or just make him burst into tears instead.

Every man is afraid of women as far as I can see, said Julian, displaying an understanding of the universe far beyond his years. That's true, she said. But only because most men are not as smart as women and yet they continue to hold all the power, they fear a change of the world order.

There is cruelty in the world, Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.

Fences such as the one at the heart of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas still exist; it is unlikely that they will ever fully disappear. But whatever reaction you have to this story, I hope that the voices of Bruno and Shmuel will continue to resonate with you as they have with me. Their lost voices must continue to be heard; their untold stories must continue to be recounted. For they represent the ones who didn't live to tell their stories themselves.

wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?

The powers that be, the Great Unelected Consciences of the World, didn't approve of what she said and that was the end of her.

People that are, you know, constantly alert to every injustice in society, every perceived slight, and who are just desperate to let you know when they've found one. They seek them out with all the urgency of truffling pigs.

Your country, mine, every other country in the world, has the same cause and what it does is, it takes people who don't give a pint of whaledreck for it and sends them off to kill women and children. Yes, it's the cause of every country on earth! And you know what I call that cause? I call it naked stinking greed.

Votre pays, le mien, tous les pays du monde, partagent la même cause, et le résultat, c'est que des gens qui s'en foutent comme d'une fiente de baleine sont envoyés pour tuer des femmes et des enfants. La voilà, la cause de tous les pays ! Et vous savez ce que c'est que cette cause ? Pour moi, c'est de la rapacité pure et simple, et elle me pue au nez ! »

We've exalted our womenfolk into little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life.

Since we tend to see ourselves primarily in light of our intentions, which are invisible to others," said philosopher J. G. Bennett, "while we see others mainly in the light of their actions, which are all that's visible to us, we have a situation in which misunderstanding and injustice are the order of the day." And

A victim is a person who suffers a loss because of the actions of others.

That's not fair! You can't talk back to the Tales! They are all we have!