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“I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“Heroes and victims are the product of the mood they were in when opportunity came or when circumstances were at their worst.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.”

Orson Scott Card

How Software Companies Die

“Just because you believe it doesn’t make it so.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 10.

“Humans, in order to rise above the animals, had learned how to convert themselves into nothing more than organs or limbs or even disposable fingernails and hair of a larger metaphorical organism.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“I think that I say those things that make people so angry, not because I really mean them, but because I simply thought of a clever way to say them. It's a kind of art, to think of the perfect way to say an idea, and when you think of it then you have to say it, because words don't exist until you say them."
"A pretty feeble kind of art, Nyef, and I say you should give it up before it gets you killed.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

“He exuded confidence without ever looking as is he wanted to make sure everyone else knew how confident he was.”

Orson Scott Card book Lost Boys

Lost Boys (1992)

“We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“The barrier was only in my mind — which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

“If I have to choose between an omnipotent God who leaves the world in this condition, and a God who has only a little bit of power but really cares and tries to make things better, I'll take you every time. Go on playing God, Hyrum. You're not bad at it. Sometimes you kind of get it right.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Julian Delphiki, aka Bean.
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Giant (2005)

“I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.”

Orson Scott Card book Future on Fire

Future on Fire (1991), introduction.

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

Orson Scott Card book Future on Fire

Future on Fire (1991), introduction.

“The billion billion paths of his life lay open before him, waiting for his first choices, for the first changes in the world around him to eliminate a million futures every second.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 5.

“I walked down the hill, forgot philosophy, and joined the human race again. Nobody was particularly glad to see me.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“What Alvin figured out was that when you’re Making, you don’t use people like tools. You don’t wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they’re right.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 14.

“"'Waterloo was won,'" quoted Rackham, "'on the playing fields of Eton.'"
"What the hell does that mean?" asked Carn Carby. "You never even went to Eton."
"It was an analogy," said Rackham. "If you hadn't spent your entire childhood playing war games, you'd actually know something. You're all so uneducated."”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Giant (2005)

“She thinks she's kept me. She would have kept me better if she had let me go now.”

Orson Scott Card Songmaster

Songmaster (1979)

““I was ordained,” said the preacher. “No one ordains artists. They ordain themselves.”
Just as Taleswapper had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 9.

“Will I be coming to you as husband or a child? A partner or a student?”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)