Orson Scott Card: Doing

“Ethan Wyeth: I hope you're thirsty."
Gideon Wyeth:"Why?"
Ethan: "Cause your dumb and ugly, but I can do something about thirsty.”

“Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.”

“I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.”

“Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won”

“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.”

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

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

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.”

“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?”

“This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.”

“As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what “just living” might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.”

“Nobodys life ever goes according to plan.
So why do we keep on planning?
Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become.
And fail.
I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.”

“Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.”

“Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing.”

“Ender understood more than she said. Manipulation of gravity was one thing; deception by the officers was another; but the most important message was this: the adults are the enemy, not the other armies. They do not tell us the truth.”

“Sometimes good people have to do terrible things.”

“The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.”