“There are many steps on the continuum between controlling something and doing nothing at all.”
Page 57
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), The Polish Boy
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Orson Scott Card 586
American science fiction novelist 1951Related quotes

No record of this specific remark exists prior to its use by a George W. Phillips, in an address to the fifth annual convention of the National Association of Life Underwriters (June 1894), reported in The Chronicle: A Weekly Journal, Devoted to the Interests of Insurance Vol. LIII (1894), p. 336 https://books.google.com/books?id=xoAoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA335&dq=%22What+is+defeat?+Nothing+but+education.+Nothing+but+the+first+step+to+something+better.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFiMan5KveAhWl6YMKHYV6C44Q6AEIdTAO#v=onepage&q=%22What%20is%20defeat%3F%20Nothing%20but%20education.%20Nothing%20but%20the%20first%20step%20to%20something%20better.%22&f=false
Misattributed

Interview with Jennifer Rycenga (2 November 1988)
Context: I probably do what I'm controlled to do. Something … made all this: some Impossibility without a name. That's what the world is controlled by: an Impossibility. It's controlled by someone they call "God" who never had a beginning and naturally had no end. And in a sense He doesn't exist, because of the standards of reality, because everybody knows something can't just happen — but if there is a God, that's what happened; just happened to be, and without ever having not been — they got to face that.

The Mathematical Magic Show (1978)

“Admitting that you do not know something is the first step to learning.”

“It was all a matter of control. And Choice.
Nothing more, nothing less”
Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

The Impact of Space Activities Upon Society (ESA Br) European Space Agency (2005)

Variant: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.