Quotes from Orson Scott Card

I know you don't know. I know what you know, and I know what you don't know. I even know what you don't know that you don't know.

Violence was what the military existed for. Controlled violence directed against appropriate targets.

it was Hitler's mistakes, his weaknesses, his fears, his hatreds, that lost the back half of the war, just as it was his drive, his decisions, that won the front half.

If only such sad people could remember: Everyone is naked. Everyone wants to hide. But life is still sweet. Let it go on.

His name is Human,' said the Speaker. 'And so is yours,' said the Bishop softly.

Take one idea that you've been struggling with, combine it with a completely unrelated idea that you've also been working on, and see what comes out of the effort to reconcile both ideas into one coherent story.

I thought you were my friend. Despite himself, Ender's voice trembled. Graff looked puzzled. Whatever gave you that idea, Ender? Because you— Because you spoke nicely to me, and honestly. You didn't lie.

The story is nothing like what you first thought it would be. But so what? It's better - richer, deeper, truer - than the original idea. The idea did its work: it got you thinking. After that, if you feel bound to stick to it no matter what, that idea becomes a ball and chain that you drag with you through the whole process.

I suspect that this is the true tragedy of the human condition. The more closely we're involved with other people, the more isolated and misunderstood we feel. Because nobody can possible know us, and we can't possible know anybody, not even ourselves. Wakers, p 427/566

You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with.

All the universe is just a dream in God's mind, and as long as he's asleep, he believes in it, and things stay real. What you see is God waking up, gradually waking up, and his wakefulness sweeps through the dream, undoes the universe, until finally he sits up, rubs his eyes, and says, My, what a dream, I wish I could remember what it was, and in that moment we'll all be gone.

but you can't preserve at all.

Frightened children are so easy to win.

was good enough when good men held the office, but always when you create an office that a man can lay hands on, an evil man will someday lay hands on it.

La felicidad puede depender tan fácilmente de las cosas útiles como de las inútiles.

The battered old DC 3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross.

Is there something in women that makes us long to be humbled? Or is it something in human beings, that when we are overmastered, we rejoice in our subjection? That would explain a lot of history.

Witchcraft and wizardry had so effectively been denied that his own powers began to weaken, for there were few who contributed to his strength by invoking his name.

The future of the human race depends on good people who want to live at peace with their neighbors, and who are willing to protect their neighbors from those who don't want peace.

Or in other words, science fiction is about what could be but isn't; fantasy is about what couldn't be.

I do have a handful of allies who will relink some of my old programs to the network once it is restored – some Samoans on Pacifica, Han Fei-tzu on Path, the Abo university on Outback.

Theresa had always loved about teaching: a group of people thinking the same thoughts, conceiving the same universe, becoming, for just a few moments, one.

Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

But then she might not be good at understanding the inflections of one such as this. Certainly it was hard to read the grimaces of such a round-eyed man. Both his face and his voice contained hidden languages that she could not understand.