“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.”

Source: Ender's Game

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs …" by Orson Scott Card?

Orson Scott Card586

American science fiction novelist 1951

Related quotes

“[…] even in the cruelest human being there can exist a flower of good. Maybe just the tiniest blossom, in need of water and sunlight, but a flower just the same.”

Meg Cabot book Shadowland

Source: Shadowland

“Whatever our purpose, we probably aren’t fulfilling it. We’re not functioning as we should.”
He shrugged at her. “How should we function?”
“Like human beings.” She said it righteously.
“Isn’t that what the human race is already doing? Functioning like human beings—squabbling with each other, killing each other, hating…?”
“That’s not human.”
“Oh, but it is. It’s very human.”
“Well, it’s not what human should be.”
“Now that’s a different story. You’re not talking about what people are, but what you want them to be.”
“Well, maybe we should be what we aren’t because what we are now isn’t good enough. Maybe we should be dismantled.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

“I don’t think we have to worry too much about somebody up there doing it—we’re doing it ourselves.”
Section 8 (p. 39)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

“All human beings have an innate skill — survival skill. The fact that poor are still alive is a proof of their ability to survive. We do not need to teach them how to survive. They know this already.”

Muhammad Yunus (1940) Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Profile at North American Bangladesh Info Center http://www.bongoz.com/people/yunus.html

“It allows human beings to step out of their lives and to revisit it and maybe find something different about it.”

Julie Taymor (1952) American film and theatre director

Bill Moyers interview (2002)
Context: I understood really the power of art to transform. I think transformation became the main word in my life.
Transformation because you don't want to just put a mirror in front of people and say, here, look at yourself. What do you see? You want to have a skewed mirror. You want a mirror that says you didn't know you could see the back of your head. You didn't know that you could amount cubistic see almost all the same aspects at the same time. It allows human beings to step out of their lives and to revisit it and maybe find something different about it.

“Human beings will find a balanced situation when they do good things not because God says it, but because they feel like doing them.”

Olof Palme (1927–1986) Swedish 20th century prime minister

Quoted in: V. Thomas (2009) The God Dilemma: To Believe Or Not to Believe,.

“Why do human beings need to confess? Maybe if you don’t have that secret confession, you don’t have a poem — don’t even have a story. Don’t have a writer.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview
Context: Why do human beings need to confess? Maybe if you don’t have that secret confession, you don’t have a poem — don’t even have a story. Don’t have a writer. If most poetry doesn’t seem to be in any sense confessional, it’s because the strategy of concealment, of obliquity, can be so compulsive that it’s almost entirely successful.