Quotes from Orson Scott Card

As history shows us, when colonization is voluntary, people will self-select better than any testing system. It's like those foolish attempts to control immigration to American based on the traits that were deemed desirable, when in fact the only trait that defines Americans historically is "descended from somebody willing to give up everything to live there." Willingness is the single most important test.

Maybe I will do what I want with my life! The only problem is that I have no idea what I want to do with it.

Carn Carby left, and ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

who would expect less? she said. You're a Wiggin. Whatever that means. He said. It means that you are going to make a difference in the world.

Cover your butt. Bernard is watching.

You don't want to give God the credit because you don't think he exists. But if you're going to blame him for all the crap, kid, you got to give him credit for what grows from that fertilized soil.

He couldn't go into his army's barracks -- he had long since learned that the best commanders stay away unless they have some reason to visit. The boys have to have a chance to be at peace, at rest, without someone listening, to favor or despise them depending on the way they talk, and act, and think.

I'll go from world to world until I find a time and place where you can come awake in safety. And I'll tell your story to my people, so that perhaps in time the can forgive you, too. The way that you've forgiven me.

I know everything I need to know already, Rigg always said... To which Father always replied,See how ignorant you are? You don't even know why you need to know the things you don't know yet. So tell me, said Rigg. I would but you're too ignorant to understand the reasons why your ignorance is a fatal disease...

You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them to, Mother, you'll always feel betrayed. And because eventually everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat, Mother. You're the one who uses our love for us to try to control us.

I speak to everyone in the language they understand, said Ender. That isn't being slick. It's being clear

Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves- either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.

Ender was a destroyer, but what he destroyed was illusion, and the illusion had to die...the truth about ourselves. Somehow this ancient man is able to see the truth and it doesn't blind his eyes or drive him mad. I must listen to this voice and let its power come to me so I, too, can stare at the light and not die.

Ender had never spoken of that to anyone, not even to Mother, but had kept it as a memory of holiness, of how his mother loved him when she thought that no one, not even he, could see or hear. That was what Alai had given him: a gift so sacred that even Ender could not be allowed to understand what it meant.

someone's sent a loving note in lines of returning geese and as the moon fills my western chamber as petals dance over the flowing stream again I think of you the two of us living a sadness apart a hurt that can't be removed yet when my gaze comes down my heart stays up

If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

Every time, I've won because I could understand the way my enemy though. From what they did. I could tell what they though I was doing, how they wanted the battle to take shape. And I played off of that. I'm very good at that. Understanding how other people think. - Ender Wiggin

The Earth is deep, and right to the heart it's alive. We people only live on the top, like the bugs that live on the scum of the still water near the shore.

He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn't think of any jokes, and none of theirs seemed funny. Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn't find such a place in himself. He was afraid, and fear made him serious.

Don't judge me until you understand me. You can't understand me if you've already judged me.

You get all the pleasures of the puppeteer.

I can see by your face that I'll never persuade you. And that's surprising, because usually you at least try to see my side. I can see your side, said Cecily. I've got a much clearer view of it than you do, from over here on my side.

Oh, Pipo, I'd be glad for you to try. But do believe me, my dear friend, touching her heart is like bathing in ice I imagine. I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.

Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. Never mock a tender heart, he said.