Orson Scott Card: Trending quotes (page 6)

“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.”

“Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.”

“Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now.”

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.”

“Everyone dies. Everyone leaves. What matters is the things you build together before they go. What matters is the part of them that continues in you when they're gone.”

“The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.”

“A broken clock is right two times a day.”

“The only way to retrieve a secret, once known, is to replace it with a lie.”

“Isn’t that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?”

“People will always go. Always. They always believe the can make a better life than in the old world.
What the hell, maybe they can.”

“Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.”

“It's what I was born for, isn't it? If I don't go, why am I alive?”

“I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them.”

“It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens.”

“Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.”

“The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.”

“When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish… Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.”

“All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better—
So why do I hate my life?”

“The old tale of Sleeping Beauty might end happily in French or English, but he was in Russia, and only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale.”