"If you make a gun, you are either going to sell it or you are going to use it. And if you're going to sell it, someone else is going to use it"
About this Quote
Boyd’s line has the bluntness of a studio maxim: materials have consequences. A gun isn’t like a chair or a vase, where usefulness can stay morally neutral. The object’s “telos” is baked in. By stripping the argument down to two verbs - sell or use - he corners the listener into admitting a chain of custody that doesn’t dilute culpability, it distributes it.
The subtext is an artist’s skepticism toward the comforting story we tell ourselves about distance. “I didn’t pull the trigger” is the ethical version of “I just paint landscapes”: a way to claim innocence through role. Boyd refuses that split. He treats the making of a weapon as the first act in a narrative that ends in bodily harm, even if the maker never meets the harmed. In that sense, it’s less a pacifist slogan than a diagnosis of how modern economies launder responsibility. The market becomes a moral fog machine: once something is for sale, agency gets passed along like an invoice.
Context matters: Boyd, a major Australian modernist, worked in the long shadow of World War II and the Cold War, eras when industrial production made violence scalable and impersonal. His broader work often fretted over cruelty, power, and the fragility of the human figure. This quote is that anxiety rendered as a syllogism. It’s aimed at the people who want the profit, the craft, or the “freedom” of gun-making without owning the likely outcome. Boyd’s point is that intention doesn’t end at the workbench; it travels with the object.
The subtext is an artist’s skepticism toward the comforting story we tell ourselves about distance. “I didn’t pull the trigger” is the ethical version of “I just paint landscapes”: a way to claim innocence through role. Boyd refuses that split. He treats the making of a weapon as the first act in a narrative that ends in bodily harm, even if the maker never meets the harmed. In that sense, it’s less a pacifist slogan than a diagnosis of how modern economies launder responsibility. The market becomes a moral fog machine: once something is for sale, agency gets passed along like an invoice.
Context matters: Boyd, a major Australian modernist, worked in the long shadow of World War II and the Cold War, eras when industrial production made violence scalable and impersonal. His broader work often fretted over cruelty, power, and the fragility of the human figure. This quote is that anxiety rendered as a syllogism. It’s aimed at the people who want the profit, the craft, or the “freedom” of gun-making without owning the likely outcome. Boyd’s point is that intention doesn’t end at the workbench; it travels with the object.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|
More Quotes by Arthur
Add to List
