Orson Scott Card Quotes

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“At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds:

THE END OF THE WORLD

He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.”

“You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.”

“When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man.”

“And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?”

“And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.”

“One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.”

“I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.”

“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.”

“Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.”

“Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.”

“You killed more people than anybody in history."

"Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.”

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

“The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.”

“We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.”

“He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.”

“The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad endingsometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually theending.”

“I didn't want to see you."
"They told me."
"I was afraid that I'd still love you."
"I hoped that you would.”

“It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about.”

“If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow.”

“The enemy gate is down.”

“Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.”

“What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.”

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

“No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.”

“In order to learn, one must change one's mind.”

“We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.”

“I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.”

“Into the the air, into the earth, into the fire, I am with you.”

“It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.”

“An eye for an eye? How Christian of you.'

Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.”

“Science Fiction has rivets, fantasy has trees.”

“Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.”

“Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child… Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.”

“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?”

“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.”