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Orson Scott Card Quotes
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Orson Scott Card is an American novelist, critic, public speaker, essayist, and columnist. He writes in several genres but is known best for science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win both science fiction's top U.S. prizes in consecutive years. A feature film adaptation of Ender's Game, which Card co-produced, was released in late October 2013 in Europe and on November 1, 2013, in North America.

Card is a professor of English at Southern Virginia University, has written two books on creative writing, hosts writing bootcamps and workshops, and serves as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest. A great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, Card is a practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . In addition to producing a large body of fiction works, he has also offered political, religious, and social commentary in his columns and other writing.

He has written under a number of pseudonyms, including Frederick Bliss, Brian Green, P.Q. Gump, Dinah Kirkham, Scott Richards, and Byron Walley.

✵ 24. August 1951
Orson Scott Card photo
Orson Scott Card: 586 quotes16 likes

Orson Scott Card Quotes

“A man who can’t read only knows what other folks tell him.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 15.

“Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“Whenever the law gets its hands on you, those who use the law to their own advantage will also turn it against you. Don’t put your trust in the laws of men, Alvin. They were designed by strong men to improve their power over weaker ones.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyways.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“Why do you bother asking, when you know the answer and you also know that you don't intend to believe it?”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth.”

Orson Scott Card

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

““A man like that thinks that fear can win loyalty.”
“Plenty of masters with a lash who can testify it works.”
“Don’t win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 4 “La Tia” (p. 74).

“They don't know how to watch things. They don't know how to see anything but what they expect to see.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

“She knew that her feelings toward Bean were completely different. No such dreams and fantasies. Just a sense of complete acceptance. She belonged with Bean, not the way that a wife belonged with a husband or, God forbid, a girlfriend with a boyfriend, but rather way the left hand belonged to the right. They simply fit. Nothing exciting about it, nothing to write home about. But it could be counted on.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Petra
Ender's Game series, Shadow of the Hegemon (2001)

“She going to be free now. She can go home to Jesus.
Call me selfish, but I wanted her to go home with me.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“She got out of the car in a smooth motion that [he] found attractive precisely because it did not seem designed to make men watch her do it.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“A liar sees lies,” said Taleswapper. “Even when they aren’t there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can’t stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 2.

“The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that other people will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 5 “Crystal Ball” (p. 82).

“In a way, he lost some of himself, some of his knack, and therefore some of the choices he might have had in life. But in losing those, he gained so much more freedom, so much more power, that he was clear winner in the bargain.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 18.

“It (i. e., advertising) was like horoscopes—enough blind stabs and some of them are bound to strike a target.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 185
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Investment Counselor

“You think my apology means I'm weak. But it doesn't. It means I am trying to learn how to be strong.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

“How is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than clean, painless death?”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

“If I wanted to doubt then I could doubt endlessly. But at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

“Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

““I have no fear of war,” said Arthur Stuart. “That’s when kings get to show their mettle.”
“You’re thinking of chess,” said Margaret. “In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 14.

“Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

“What the White man had won with so much blood and dishonesty was not the living land of the Red man, but the corpse of that land. It was decay that the White man won. It would turn to dust in his hands, Alvin knew it.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 18.

“It made me wonder if perhaps our ancestors' crimes were not in fact far more terrible than they claimed. After all, the only histories we possessed told their version of what happened, and in their accounts they were completely innocent.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“Coincidence is just the word we use when we have not yet discovered the cause.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

“Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

“They are beautiful monsters… And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.”

Orson Scott Card

Wyrms (1987).

“You never needed anybody.
If you had ever bothered to come to know me, you'd know that that is the exact opposite of the truth.
Well, well. So we part in utter ignorance of each other.”

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

“Here's my throat. I carry no weapon. You could have killed me at any time, even when I knew you were my enemy. Why did you need to deceive me into trusting you first? Were you afraid that death wouldn't bother me enough, unless I felt betrayed?”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

“I think if you left grownups to do what they really actually wanted most in the world to do, every single one of them would lie down and take a nap for the rest of their life. I know this because that's what every grownup does as soon as they're alone.”

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

“Lolla-Wossiky is left like a White man then. Cut off from the land. Ground crunching underfoot. Branches snagging. Roots tripping. Animals running away.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.

“Justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

“Lookit that,” he said. “A lawyer who knows how to do something useful. That’s a miracle.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 12.

“You were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you.”

Orson Scott Card book Lost Boys

Lost Boys (1992)

“The White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 2.

“Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 18.

“'A woman's wisdom is her gift to women,'" Peggy quoted. "'Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to God.'”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 10.

“I've done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.”
“In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.”
“He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.”

Orson Scott Card

“An obnoxious child.”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 13.

“You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

“Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.

“Denmark nursed that anger and it kept him free.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 10.

“It’s plain that if I married you for brains I was plumb cheated.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 7.

“"Women's intuition" wasn't intuition at all, it was heightened observation, unconscious registration of subtle clues.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

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

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 9.

“Every terrible thing in the world was caused by a whole combination of things. But everybody wanted to narrow it down to one cause—and not even the real one. Much better to have one cause—one person to punish. Then the unbearable could be borne.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 3 “Fever” (p. 56).

“I immediately felt so comfortable there. Or if not comfortable, at least willing to bear the discomforts because they fit the awkward places in my heart.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“Road poured out into a place of meadows and a few White man’s buildings. Lots of wagons. Horses posted and tied, grazing on the meadow grass. Sounds of metal hammers ringing, chopping of axes in the wood, screech of saws going back and forth, all kinds of White-man forest-killing sounds. A White man’s town.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.

“There were always people searching for the Unmaker, for some awful destructive power outside themselves. Poor fools, they always thought that Destruction was merely destruction, they were using it and when they were done with it, they’d set to building. But you don’t build on a foundation of destruction. That’s the dark secret of the Unmaker, Alvin thought. Once he sets you to tearing down, it’s hard to get back to building, hard to get your own self back. The digger wears out the ground and the spade. And once you let yourself be a tool in the Unmaker’s hand, he’ll wear you out, he’ll tear you down, he’ll dull you and hole you and all the time you’ll be thining you’re so sharp and fine and bright and whole, and you never go till he lets go of you, lets you drop and fall. What’s that clatter? Why, that was me. That was me, sounding like a wore-out tool. What you leaving me for? I still got use left in me?
But you don’t, not when the Unmaker’s got you.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“War was never so careful as to inflict suffering only where it was merited.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 2.

“He would rather lose his power for doing right, than keep his power by doing wrong. Because he loves his people more than he loves his office.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)