Quotes from Orson Scott Card

Saving the human race is a frantic one. Or a tedious one. It all depends on what stage of the process you're taking part in.

the cruelest, narrowest, most evil people will always rise to power because they'll always be the ones most willing to wrap themselves in the crescent flag and murder people in God's name.

If you wait until you know everything, you never do anything.

It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone.

The warmth of mutual respect...Not the heat of anger or the ice of hate.

She believed that people revealed themselves most when they were vaguely anxious, and few things brought out nonspecific anxieties like being in the presence of a person who never speaks.

The little bitch. She didn't have her files in another computer. She kept everything she knew inside her head.

And that's as sure as we ever are of anything. We believe it enough to act as though it's true. When we'r'e that sure, we call it knowledge. Facts. We bet our lives on it.

Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad.

I've thought of all the questions, said Father. That only means you've stopped trying to think of new ones.

Ender grinned back. "Teacher," he said. "Do you have a name?" "Mazer Rackham," said the old man.

Before we are citizens, he thought, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty. I have done my duty. I have bowed to authority. Mostly. And now, like Russia, I can set aside those burdens for a little while and see what happens.

I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly—I'll beat you unfairly first.

So what do we do now?" asked Alai. "The bugger war's over, and so's the war down there on Earth, and even the war here. What do we do now?" "We're kids," said Petra. "They'll probably make us go to school. It's a law. You have to go to school till you're seventeen." They all laughed at that.

Believed, but the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human beings—that what they saw and loved they had to have. They could share it with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow their own. What we own is ours. What you own should also be ours. In fact, you own nothing, if we want it. Because you are nothing. We are the real people, you are only posing as people in order to try to deprive us of what God means us to have.

History's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied.

Why do we persist in this divided idiocy? Because the world is full of prideful bastards, that's why. Everyone believes they're smarter than everyone else, more capable than everyone else, more justified than everyone else. Humility went extinct a long time ago.

I don't care how loyal you think you're going to be Dink. It's not in you. You're a brat and you always will be. So admit what a lousy follower you are and go ahead and LEAD. -Petra

The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them.

But then, I would rather be mocked for doing a good thing than to be respected, knowing I have done wrong.

Alvin smiled back, and kissed her. People talk about fools counting chickens before they hatch. That's nothing. We name them.

Wang-mu fell silent, but not because she was embarrassed. She simply had nothing to say, and therefore said nothing.