Quotes from Orson Scott Card

Being angry isn't always for a reason that makes sense.

Faith is not to blindly believe, son. Faith is action. It's doing something. It's creating what we need and believing that God will be merciful enough to grant it in his time.

Now...different rules of magic prevail; different words have power. Different customs are now required of everyone and you have to obey or pay. And so we all live in a world where other people hold the power, where other people are the mages who know how to whisper to different social elements and make things happen. And most of us stand around bewildered, wondering what the gods will do next to manipulate our lives.

Early to bed and early to rise...makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

I'm saying that America shaped itself with institutions so strong that it could survive corruption, stupidity, vanity, ambition, recklessness, and even insanity in its chief executive.

Philosophy was as far above her as the sky was above the earth. "But the sky only seems to be far away from you," said Master Han, when she told him this. "Actually it is all around you. You breathe it in and you breathe it out, even when you labor with your hands in the mud. That is true philosophy.

Mother's ironic vision of life as one prank after another

Money and talent aren't the same thing." "That's because you can inherit money that was earned by your ancestors," said Sister Carlotta. "And everybody recognizes the value of money, while only select groups recognize the value of talent.

Mother, I don't dream of marrying a prince and riding off into the sunset. That's a good thing, my darling, because there are no princes - only men and animals who pretend to be men.

In wartime, commanders have always had to learn the concept of "acceptable losses." But those who keep their humanity never really accept the idea of acceptability

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others

Ivan couldn't think of a religion that was any damn good at making utter truthtellers out of its practitioners. Maybe the Quakers were truly plainspoken at one time, but even they managed to squeeze out a Richard Nixon after a few hundred years of suppressing their human propinquity for untruth.

self-gratulation

idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths

Mother's ironic vision of life as one prank after another, in the midst of which you did what was needed.

He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science." "In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.

Some sort of rigid hierarchy always emerged as the conservative force in a community, maintaining its identity despite the constant variations and changes that beset it.

As Ender had once said, most victories came from instantly exploiting your enemy's stupid mistakes, and not from any particular brilliance in your own plan.

With gay marriage, the last shreds of meaning will be stripped away from marriage, with homosexuals finishing what faithless, selfish heterosexuals have begun.

He touched the keyboard and the terminal displayed a list of all the activities he usually engaged in, then scanned through them. He could touch a key and it would go directly to the activity he wanted, skipping dozens of preliminaries, saving him many painful minutes of typing one character at a time.

the kind of person on whom you could put all your hopes, who could carry all your fears, and he would not let you down, would not betray you. I

The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life. We don't throw our forces away because every soldier is the queen of a one-member hive. But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong — for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives.

On the contrary—there can be no greater honor to a parent than to have a child who is greater.

Just as [he] had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter....