Quotes About Victory

Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too. So they'd leave me alone.

The classes were valuable, but the real education was the game.

Ender knew that at this moment he might be able to walk out of the room and end the battle. The way he had escaped from the battleroom after drawing blood. But the battle would only be fought again. Again and again until the will to fight was finished. The only way to end things completely was to hurt Bonzo enough that his fear was stronger than his hate.

The devil takes his victories," the man replied, "wherever men of God lose heart, and leave the field to him.

Endurance, after all, was a kind of victory; a kind of heroism, too.

The enemy's gate is down.

There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will teach you how to destroy and conquer.

Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly. If anybody's going to be scared, let it be the buggers." "Makes you almost feel sorry for them, knowing Ender's going to be coming after them.

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.

Let me tell you about Ender. He's all about beating the other guys. Not just winning-he has to beat the other guy into the ground or he isn't happy.

If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first.

The enemy's gate was down.

That's the problem with winning right from the start, though Ender. You lose friends.

Like running the hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them ... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone.

I didn't know how you'd get us out of that last one. But you did. You were good.

Until you know that you're tougher than the enemy, you maneuver, you don't commit to battle.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.

Orson Scott Card

The trouble was, innovation never resulted in victory over the long term. It was too easy for the enemy to imitate and improve on your innovations.

When armies benefit from being perceived as necessary, and war provides a means of gaining prestige and leverage over the government," said Loaf. "Then victory ends a very profitable game. So you play the game of war only fervently enough to keep your military budget high. Nations can get used to a fairly high level of combat attrition without noticing or caring that nobody's actually trying to win, and nothing but the lives of a few soldiers is at stake.

Sometimes David kills Goliath, and people never forget. But there were a lot of little guys Goliath had already mashed into the ground. Nobody sang songs about those fights…

That's how war is fought, in case any of you have foolish ideas to the contrary. You don't fight with minimum force, you fight with maximum force at endurable cost. You don't just pink your enemy, you don't even bloody him, you destroy his capability to fight back. It's the strategy you use with diseases.

Through their training, they had all learned that winning depended on being able to forget everything but what you were doing at that moment. You could hold all your ships in your mind at once — but only if any ship that no longer matters could be blocked out completely. Thinking about dead men, about torn bodies having the air sucked out of their lungs by the cold vacuum of space, who could still play the game knowing that this was what it really meant?

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.