1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card Quotes
page 6

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

“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.

“As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“I interpreted all you did as weakness — but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

“And he wanted a wife. He wanted to raise children. He wanted to prove that goodness wasn’t beaten into children, that fear was not the fount from which virtue flowed. He wanted to be able to gather his family in his arms and know that not one of them dreaded the sight of him, or felt the need to lie to him in order to have his love.”

Orson Scott Card

(Chapter reference needed).
The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995)

““I see Alvin with a son. That what he want most.”
“I see him with a woman,” said Rien. “That is what he miss the most.”
“I see him kneeling by a child’s grave,” said Dead Mary. “That is what he fears the most.””

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 16 “Labor” (p. 307).

“Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a little queen. And your mercy will be your undoing.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

“What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he’s done, and that’s as good as any man ever gets.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 13.

“Don't lie to me! Don't seem so normal when I know you have cut yourself off from me in your heart! If you can put on our affectionate closeness like a mask, then I'll never be able to take joy in it again.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

“Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man’s sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman’s throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer’s table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 1.

“You just refuse to leave them alone until they change their minds. Of their own free will.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

“Andrew Jackson neatly resolved the issue by walking into congress and placing his hand on the Bible they kept there as a reminder of all the virtues they worked so hard to get the voters to believe they possessed.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 19.

“What is the White man? What does he do?
The White man is like a human being, but he crushes all other living things under his feet.
Then why, O Ta-Kumsaw, when I look into your heart, why is it that you do not wish to hurt the White man, that you do not wish to kill the White man?
The White man doesn’t know the evil that he does. The White man doesn’t feel the peace of the land, so how can he tell the little deaths he makes? I can’t blame the White man. But I can’t let him stay. So when I make him leave this land, I won’t hate him.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“A dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

Hart's Hope (1983)

“She sounded how you'd expect talking to a tree to sound - bored out of her mind.”

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

“I was forgetting how it really was, I was remembering it through common, ordinary eyes, I was remembering it as the boy I was before, but now I remember that it wasn't me being weak or me being naked, or anything else that I should be ashamed of.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

““Black with hate,” said Becca. “You are gathering your people with hate.”
“Can you imagine conducting a war with love?” asked Ta-Kumsaw.
“That’s a reason to refuse to make war at all,” she said gently.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 17.

“This is Alvin Smith,” said Cooper. “He’s a man of inestimable abilities, but only because nobody has cared enough to estimate them.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Wasn’t that their natural right, to know the truth so as to be able to let the truth lead them to do good or evil, as they chose?”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 17.

“Knowing was better than not knowing. But not by much.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“Perhaps I’m hiding from myself. Perhaps I don’t want to be what I’m supposed to be. Or perhaps I don’t want to keep living the life I already started to live.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“It never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don't lie.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

“She don’t set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa, and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?”

Orson Scott Card

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

“That's one of those questions, whether human beings are really capable of change, or if all seeming changes are really a matter of framing the existing character in a different moral situation.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“Please open your mind to the possibility that I might be an honest man who was himself deceived.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

“You'll find out I was never sand at all, but a seed, and out of death I'll make life. You can't break me. And whatever plan you have in mind, you can't make me.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

“I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthfall (1995)

“A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets.”

Orson Scott Card

Quoted by Mary Robinette Kowal in &quot; Precogs and Ray Guns Have No Place In True SciFi http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/2009/09/science-fantasy.php&quot;. <br class="br">Attributed

“Just because you live every waking moment with dreams of controlling other people doesn't mean the rest of us do.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

“Something had been given back to him. And because [she] had been a part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

“Some men are great enough that they can love a whole woman, and not just part of her.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Sometimes it felt to him as though he’s spent most of his life traveling, and never quite got to anywhere that mattered.
Then again, that might be as good a description of what life was supposed to be as anyone ever thought of. The only real destination was death, and our lives consisted of finding the most circuitous and pleasant path to get there.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 7 “Errand Boy” (p. 136).

“Here’s the bottom line. I promise you it’s entirely legal, and he can’t touch you for it. This is how the laws are written. They’re designed to protect the fortunes of people as rich as you, while throwing the main tax burden on people in much lower brackets.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 200
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Investment Counselor

“We've seen the worst that men can do, pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don't mean that someday we won't see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can't we?”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 14.

“Maybe if I could bear my life as it is for one day, for one hour, for one minute, I could forget my wish to be something else.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“Many a man isn't as good as his woman, but I never knew a husband who was better than his wife.”

Orson Scott Card book Saints

Saints (1983)

“Don’t you think it’s ironic that you have no idea what you’re supposed to do,” said Verily, “and yet so many people have gone to so much trouble to prevent you from doing it?”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 3.

“Calvin, what kind of trouble are you planning to make?”
“No trouble at all,” said Calvin, annoyed. “Why do you think I want to cause trouble?”

Orson Scott Card

“Because you are awake.”
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 4.

“When I am drunk I am at my best. It is the national knack of the French.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“God's hand is strange to us. He cares nothing for the moment, nothing for the feeble ambitions of men and women. He sees the road that flows onward forever.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

“[He] looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed.”

Orson Scott Card Songmaster

Songmaster (1979)

“I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door,
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Our savior will resurrect us,” said Peggy, “but I haven’t noticed that Christians end up any less dead at the end of life than heathens.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Keep your freedom, keep your immortality, but somewhere along the line I hope you figure out what you're living forever for. What noble purpose you mean to achieve. Because you're no good to anyone here, not even yourselves.”

Orson Scott Card

Treason (1988)

“Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 3.

“I will not be tamed, only persuaded. I will not be coerced or led blindly or tricked or bullied - I am willing only to be convinced. If you don't trust your own basic goodness enough to tell me what you're trying to do… Then you're confessing your own moral weakness and I'll never serve you.”

Orson Scott Card

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

“She had that irony in her eyes. Knowledge without wisdom. Power without purpose. Like me.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

“No, no, no, Hooch told himself silently. Getting even don’t amount to nothing in this world. Getting even only gets you behind. The best revenge is to get rich enough to make them all call you sir, that’s how you get even with these boys.”

Orson Scott Card

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

“Alvin wondered if it was true—if all men had evil in their hearts, and those men as were good, maybe they were simply the ones who controlled theirselves so well they could act contrary to their heart’s desire. But if that were so, then no man was good, not one.”

Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 11.

“This man, though, was of that rare type that knew what he wanted but didn't want anything badly enough to demand it or beg for it or hurt anyone else in the process of getting it.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)