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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   quotes 13   likes

Orson Scott Card Quotes

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

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Silence

“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.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Men , Dead

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

Orson Scott Card

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

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Thinking , Freedom , Universe , Evil

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

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 72
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Teacher's Pest

Religion

“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.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Hunger , God , People , World

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

People , Beauty , Thinking

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

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

““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.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 5.

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Death , World , Fear , Strong

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

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Women

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 2 “Squirrel and Moose” (p. 33).

Thinking

“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.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

People

“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?”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 54
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), The Polish Boy

People , Thinking

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

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

“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.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Justice , Beauty , Time

“I don’t plan to die for any cause,” said Jim Bowie. “Nor any man, excepting only myself. I know that ain’t noble, but it prolongs my days, which is philosophy enough for me.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 17 “Foundation” (p. 334).

“He’d undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can’t call back the futures that your bad decisions lost. He didn’t need no philosopher to tell him that.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Decision , Future

“The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa.”

Orson Scott Card

How Software Companies Die

“I’m neutral on lying, seeing as how there’s times when the truth just hurts people.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 2 “Squirrel and Moose” (p. 21).

People , Truth , Lying , Time

“You're the only one that I would be glad to be close to forever, because all your secrets are bright and good and I love you for them.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Love , Secret

“All children are manipulators.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

Children

“I think that a good person can sometimes do wrong out of ignorance or weakness or wrong thinking, but when hard times come, the goodness wins out after all. And a bad person can often seem good and trustworthy for a long time, but when hard times come, the evil in him gets revealed.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Thinking , Evil , Time , Personality

“This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard.”

Orson Scott Card book Lost Boys

Lost Boys (1992)

Love

“Why give you answers you wont believe?
Well, answers I don't believe would be a step forward.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

“The older you get, the more you believe in God, whatever face he wears.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

God

“That’s how it goes within a family. You think you know each other so well, and so you don’t bother hardly getting to know each other at all.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 2.

Family , Thinking

“I always play with everybody,” said Honoré. “It is my vocation. God put me on the earth to do with people what cats do to mice. Play with them, chew the last bit of life out of them, them pick them up in my mouth and drop them on people’s doorsteps. That is the business of literature.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 6.

Life , God , People , Cats

“She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as women judge men — not on the strength of their arguments, and not on their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, the strength of their soul, their compassion, and — ah, this above all — their conversation.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

Women , Men , Soul , Passion

“It wasn’t so bad being a slave when your owner was yourself and stood up for you.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Didn’t he know that when you work to destroy, you invite the Destroyer?”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 6.

“Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he’d stay stupid.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 17.

Stupidity , Madness , Night

“Frozen, right? But to others, it looks like you're calm as could be. That's why some of the others tease you so mercilessly sometimes. They think you're made of stone, and they want to break in and touch the human feelings. They just don't know that when you seem most stony, that's when you're the most frightened and breakable.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Feeling , Thinking

“The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind.”

Orson Scott Card

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

God

“Men like Jackson were so upright and honest-seeming, but Hooch knew that there wasn’t no such thing as a good man, just a man who wasn’t bought yet, or wasn’t in deep enough trouble, or didn’t have the guts to reach out and take what he wanted. That’s all that virtue ever boiled down to, so far as Hooch ever saw in his life.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 1.

Life , Men

“What I am seeing right now is a man who is so dominated by his mother that he is willing to throw away his marriage in order to protect her from the trauma of growing up and acting like an adult.”

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

Marriage

“When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 1.

Truth , Lying

“That is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 11 “Flood” (p. 214).

Death

“I don’t hold with prophets,” said Alvin. “Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man.”

Orson Scott Card

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

Dead

“There must be a special place in hell reserved for you.
I've been to hell. It's a better place than this.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

Hell

“[He] wasn't interested in meeting the kind of women who would come to one of those places looking for the kind of man who hoped to meet a woman there.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

Women , Hope

“You can’t change what you don’t understand.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 17.

Understanding , Change

“Just because you know I had no other choice doesn't make the anger go away. I understand that. But you're a man now. You can put away these childish things.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Understanding , Anger

“Love can't conquer anything. Love can't make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can't make her love me.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Enchantment (1999)

Love

“When people say perhaps it’s cause they’re lying. Either they don’t believe the thing they’re saying, or they do believe it only they don’t want to admit they do.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 3.

People , Lying

“Haven't you ever seen a 3-year-old when he makes a foolish blunder? He looks at whatever child or adult is nearby and screams at him "Look at what you made me do!" That's the moral universe that [they] always lived in.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

Universe

“By the time Verily was sixteen, a sturdy and rather good-looking young man of some education and impeccable manners, he had become a thoroughgoing skeptic. If the dogmas about witchery could be so hopelessly wrong, how could any of the teachings of the ministers be relied upon? It left Verily Cooper at loose ends, intellectually speaking, for all his teachers spoke as if religion were the cornerstone of all other learning, and yet all of Verily’s actual studies led him to the conclusion that sciences founded upon religion were uncertain at best, utterly bogus at worst.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 9.

Education , Religion , Study , Learning