Shift (Silo Trilogy #2)

by Hugh Howey

Amazing that he could live under the rules of a document he’d never read. He just assumed others had, all the people in charge, and that they were operating by its codes in good faith.

a new generation unremembering so that sons marched into the battles their fathers had already fought.

And now he saw that it wasn’t that the pain grew tolerable or the confusion went away. Instead, it simply became familiar. It became a part of you.

Donald smiled a yellowing smile and thought of the long history of madmen who remained in charge simply because no one would challenge them.

His discovery was that evil men arose from evil systems, and that any man had the potential to be perverted. Which was why some systems needed to come to an end.