“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.”

“Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.”

“If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.”

“What is the use of having a new generation without inspiration? It's such a shame that we learn more from the dead than from the living.”

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself”

“Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.”

“Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households.”

“School is a place that adds to emotional pain for most children alive today. It is even more so the case for the two most isolated kids in school: 1. The social outcasts who are isolated in every way. 2. The social actors who are surrounded by other kids, but no one sees them because they are in a relationship not with them, but with the role they play.”

“When it’s all set and done the purpose of life is to live the best way we can. We all make mistakes and should definitely learn from them.”

“We've devoted our lives to learning about them!" Miro said.

Ender stopped. "Not from them.”