Quotes from Orson Scott Card

A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified to the slightest degree, its authority is gone.

Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely.

My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.

You understand that the piggies are animals, and you no more condemn them for murdering Libo and Pipo than you condemn a cabra for shewing up capim. That's right, said Miro. Ender smiled. And that's why you'll never learn anything from them. Because you think of them as animals.

A character is what he does, yes - but even more, a character is what he means to do.

You who speak languages, you are such liars.

Let me be loved like that, by a man who will not replace me with concubines when I'm old and ugly. Let me be loved by a man who loves God more than me.

I didn't want to hurt him! Ender cried. Why didn't he just leave me alone!

That's the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.

Will people really go?" "People always go. Always. They always believe they can make a better life than in the old world.

You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knos waht warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn't know. We made sure youo didn't know. You were reckless and brilliant and young. It's waht you were born for.

America's intellectual community has never been very bright. Or honest. They're all sheep, following whatever the intellectual fashion of the decade happens to be. Demanding that everyone follow their dicta in lockstep. Everyone has to be open-minded and tolerant of the things they believe, but God forbid they should ever concede, even for a moment, that someone who disagrees with them might have some fingerhold of truth.

She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said - to the consternation of her family - What kind of idiot was Eve, to believe a snake? But now she understood, for she had heard the voice of the snake and had watched as a wise and powerful man had fallen under its spell. Eat the fruit and you can have the desires of your heart. It's not evil, it's noble and good. You'll be praised for it. And it's delicious.

The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it, either. Government office should be received like a child's Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

If you lay a hand on me I'll ram your testicles so far up inside your abdomen it'll take a heart surgeon to get them out.

Take me home, he said silently to Graff. In my dream you said you loved me. Take me home

Oh, Val, said Father. All you have to do is live your life, and everyone around you will be happier. No greatness, then. Val, said Mother, goodness trumps greatness any day. Not in the history books, said Valentine. Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they? said Father.

From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose.

We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we 'understand.' Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word every now and then.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Sometimes happiness consists of finding the right balance of misery.

The have influence, but no power. In my experience, influence is power.

I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's Ender's game.

Thank God for you, Ender. Thank God.