Orson Scott Card: Trending quotes (page 12)

“What difference does it make, whether we keep our silence because [they] force us or because we're afraid they might force us?”

“To be cut off from the land of the living, and yet not to be dead. How could I bear that?
That's how most men live, and don't even know it.”

“Do you speak Scorn and Mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?”

“If there's no place in the universe for a man to resist the thieves of freedom and still be called a good man, then I don't think there is any good or evil in the universe.”

“My religion,” said Ms. Brown, “is to try to falsify all hypotheses.”

“That was the most terrible thing that a woman could to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector.”

“Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking.”

“How could I hurt her? She'd have to love me before I could do that.”

“Physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist.
Oh, they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it.”

“I was the last to know what was happening to me. Or at least I was the last to know that I knew.”

““You,” said Purity, “have been long enough out of England to pick up some American brag.”
“But surrounded by Americans as I am,” said Cooper, “my brag is like a farthing in a sack of guineas.””

“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.”

“Out of respect for custom he treats me as if all women were equally worthless. He gives custom more respect than he gives me.”

“Folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn’t know about something bad, it wasn’t happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true.”

“Some people can't see miracles when they're right in the middle of them.
Better than seeing miracles that don't exist.
You're determined to stand entirely alone, aren't you?
That's where I've always stood.”

“Why did people get so upset when somebody mentioned dying? Did they think that if they didn’t mention it, it would skip a few people and leave them alive forever?”

“We're both damaged property, I guess.
Plenty of time for renovation.”

“We are the actors and the audience as well, all of us. And the critics. We are also the critics.”

“For the first time I understood the haunting beauty of the song. It was the song of a killer who longed to die. It was the song of justice yearned for but not yet done.”