Top 513 Quotes & Sayings by Orson Scott Card - Page 3

I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.

What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he's done, and that's as good as any man ever gets.

Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.

The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community.

The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight.

If a pig goes upon the threshing-floor, or a field, or a garden, and the owner of the meadow, or the field, or the garden smites it so that it die, he shall give it back to its owner; but if he does not give it back, he becomes a thief.

The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals.

Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I didn't fight with honor . . . I fought to win.

The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind.

It is a common trait of primates to become submissive and even worshipful toward one who has the power to kill them.

It is possible to have words come to your mind, and still refrain from speaking them aloud.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth." -Taleswapper

We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we 'understand.' Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then.

Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.

My own feeling is that human happiness is a very random thing, and bestows itself willy-nilly, and there's not much deserving about the matter.

A man who can't read only knows what other folks tell him.

You spend your whole life grieving for those who haven't died yet.

Sometimes good people have to do terrible things.

Perhaps I'm hiding from myself. Perhaps I don't want to be what I'm supposed to be. Or perhaps I don't want to keep living the life I already started to live.

The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

If anyone have intercourse with a pig or a dog, he shall die. If a man have intercourse with a horse or a mule, there is no punishment. But he shall not approach the king, and shall not become a priest... If a pig spring upon a man for intercourse, there is no punishment.

Remember, the enemy's gate is down.

If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how "important" it is?

Thank God for you, Ender. Thank God.

But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost.

The ways of love are strange and hard: The love you want is always barred; The love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.

...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell.

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.

Human: That's stupid. Isn't there grass on both sides?

You want to beat Peter?" she asked "No," he answered "Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggen anymore. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That'll be defeat in his eyes, Ender, thats how you win" "You don't understand" he said "Yes i do" "No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter" "Then what do you want?" "I want him to love me

To have a choice at all is to be free - even when the choice is between two terrible things.

The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes.

Just because you believe it doesn't make it so.

None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.

The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life. 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. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane.

This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.

I have never resisted the lord in my life, and I never will. But I'm not so hungry for dialogue with him that I have to make up his part as well as my own.

Nonsense," said Graff. "Ender always has plans within plans.

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.

We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake." "A habit.

Some men are great enough that they can love a whole woman, and not just part of her.

We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.

Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, Where there's smoke there's fire, when the saying should have been, Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.

Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you

Once you get a brother, you don’t give him up easy.

You take a step, then another. That's the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it's a remaking of your own mind.

You killed more people than anybody in history." "Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.

Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.

Intellectual understanding does not always bring visceral belief.

Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.

I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.

I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK.

You can't change what you don't understand.

Whether he likes it or not, [he] cannot remain incognito forever. He has outraged too many wise men and pleased too many fools to hide behind his too-appropriate order to assume leadership of the forces of stupidity he has marshalled, or his enemies will unmask him in order to better understand the disease that has produced such a warped and twisted mind.

It's about me, or people wouldn't be so anxious to keep me from knowing about it. The absence of information is information. ~ Ender