Quotes from Orson Scott Card

I'm hurting you to make you a better soldier in every way. To sharpen your wit. To intensify your effort. To keep you off balance, never sure what's going to happen next, so you always have to be ready for anything, ready to improvise, determined to win no matter what. I'm also making you miserable.

But Father has also taught him: Treat a man as if he had a fine reputation to protect, and he will usually endeavor to deserve it.

a lot of human behavior was really acting out our responses to dangers long past.

While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.

No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for feel. Not that Bean didn't have feelings. He simply refused to think about them or dwell on them or let them influence his decisions, when anything important was at stake.

A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

I don't know of a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines - the ones they believe they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.

Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

I thought commanders could order anything." They can order the moon to turn blue, too, but it doesn't happen. Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.

I think you can't possibly know the truth about somebody unless you love them.

All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That's why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.

So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.' 'If the other fellow can't tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn't trying to kill you.

I am only what I remember.

I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get.

Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings.

Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember?the enemy's gate is down . If you step through your own door like you're out for a stroll, you're a big target and you deserve to get hit. With more than a flasher.

I saw, I wrote, and the world changed a little.

Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother?

No one with him to tell him he must eat, he must go practice, he must sleep. Freedom. The trouble was, he didn't know what to do.

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.

She likes us," said Umbo. "I know, I could feel it too," said Rigg. "She's really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children." "Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew." "They were delicious.

With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it. Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.

it's so easy, when you never meet people, when you never know the Earth itself... it's easy to forget why Earth is worth saving. Why the world of people might be worth the price you pay.