Quotes from Orson Scott Card

There's a longer view, in which life and death are less important matters than choosing what kind of life and what kind of death we have.

Ender estaba tendido en su cama con los ojos fijos en el techo. Desde que era comandante no dormía más de cinco horas diarias.

It was Ender whose previous victories taught the enemy to think of us as one kind of creature, when we are really something quite different. He pretended all this time that humans were rational beings, when we are really the most terrible monsters these poor aliens could ever have conceived of in their nightmares.

don't even know why I do what I do. How can I know what other people's true purposes are? There's no hope

There are hard wars and easy wars. It's easy to conquer a country whose people hate their own government more than they hate the invaders. It's hard to fight a war when your army knows that back home, their families are rooting for the other side.

hatch. I wouldn't risk another high-speed dock if we don't have to.

Any animal is willing to kill in order to save itself.' 'Any animal is willing to kill the Other,' said Ender. 'But the higher beings include more and more living things within their self-story, until at last there is no Other. Until the needs of others are more important than any private desires. The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them.

That's how we're going to face the end of the world? Reading a book?

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

A liar sees lies," said Taleswapper. "Even when they aren't there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can't stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be.

He wondered which army they'd give him. Three commanders were graduating soon, including Petra, but it was beyond hope for them to give him Phoenix Army—no one ever succeeded to command of the same army he was in when he was promoted. Anderson took him first to his new quarters. That sealed it—only commanders had private rooms. Then he had him fitted for new uniforms and a new flash suit. He looked on the forms to discover the name of his army.

we got the judges to agree that the prosecution had to prove beyond doubt that Ender would have won the war without the training we gave him. After that, it was simple. The exigencies of war.

All history is the same thing over and over...The technology may change, but the behavior is still human. We are who we are. Individuals learn, grow up, get better, wiser, stronger, healthier, kinder—or the opposite. As a group, though, we keep inventing the same behaviors. Some work, some don't.

I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.

And that's as sure as we ever are of anything. We believe it enough to act as though it's true. When we're that sure, we call it knowledge. Facts. We bet our lives on it." "I guess that's what you're doing. Betting your life on her being what you think she is.

we are strange indeed among all the plants and animals, who unlike us know their place, and if they think of God at all do not imagine him to be their kin, or themselves to be his heirs.

The whole world always burns...Or it floods. Or some insect eats the crops and you starve...Every baby you have dies eventually, no matter what you do. Yet we have babies and try to go on.

I'm not in love with Eiadh because she's the most beautiful young woman in Basilica and therefore quite probably in the entire world. I'm in love with her because we can talk together, because of the way she thinks, the sound of her voice, the way she cocks her head to listen to an idea she doesn't agree with, the way she rests her hand on mine when she's trying to persuade me.

They gave us the stardrive we used to get to them, and the weapon we used to kill them. They gave us everything.

We pray for a messenger from God—who knows but what the messenger also prayed for a place to take his message?

But as she looked at his matted fur, his blood-soaked muzzle and chest, she couldn't help but think: If this winter god, this walking rug, this one-eyed whining bear is the magical guardian of Russia, then Russia is going to have a very troubled future.

Never mind,' said Mazer Rackham. 'The politicians are afraid of you, but they can't destroy your reputation yet. That won't be done until the historians get at you in thirty years.

Ella se sentía contenida en su abrazo, nunca confinada.

A pure soul must never grow attached to any one thing.