# Quote — Iain M. Banks, The Player Of Games

> A guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you’re being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it.

- Author: [Iain M. Banks](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks.md)
- Book: [The Player Of Games](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-player-of-games.md)
- Page: 215
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#The_Player_of_Games_(1988)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-player-of-games/a-guilty-system

## More from this book

> “One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh.” Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. “Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are—ha!”—Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe—“no more than robots!”

p. 279 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-player-of-games/one-of-the.md)

> He looked up from it at the stars again, and the view was warped and distorted by something in his eyes, which at first he thought was rain.

p. 390 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-player-of-games/he-looked-up-from.md)

> The news team, and Hamin, seemed well pleased. “You should have been an actor, Jernau Gurgeh,” Hamin told him.
>
> Gurgeh assumed this was intended as a compliment.

p. 306 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-player-of-games/the-news-team.md)