Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.

Orson Scott Card
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
Wouldn't it have been better to change humanity so it no longer desired to destroy itself?

Orson Scott Card
People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.

Orson Scott Card
With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.

Orson Scott Card
You killed more people than anybody in history." "Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.

Orson Scott Card
That's how it goes within a family. You think you know each other so well, and so you don't bother hardly getting to know each other at all.

Orson Scott Card
Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and... now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievement." It gets to be a habit. Most of us manage to keep our body count quite low. It's the neighborly way to live.

Orson Scott Card
That's the way it was then, you see. Folks noticed other people's trouble every bit as quick as if it was their own.

Orson Scott Card
She can't help her red skin, and she isn't heathen. In fact, she's a Baptist, which is almost like being Christian, only louder.

Orson Scott Card
How could you tell, when utter honesty and cynical manipulation would each account completely for the things she said and did?

Orson Scott Card
In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest.

Orson Scott Card
Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won.

Orson Scott Card
Don't press her, said Cooper. If someone decides to leave something unsaid, my experience is that everyone is happier if they don't insist on his saying it.

Orson Scott Card
I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's Ender's game.

Orson Scott Card
The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that other people will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream.

Orson Scott Card
Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

Orson Scott Card
Verily wondered what the man could have the audacity to say, in the face of such evidence—what whining, sniveling complaint or protest he might utter.

Orson Scott Card
To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps... loosen them up.

Orson Scott Card
I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first. - Ender

Orson Scott Card
More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would.

Orson Scott Card
Like all children they only wanted to be known, and cared little about giving that gift to others.

Orson Scott Card
How could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?

Orson Scott Card
Quim," she said, "don't ever try to teach me about good and evil. I've been there, and you've seen nothing but a map.

Orson Scott Card
I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man.

Orson Scott Card
I was ordained, said the preacher. No one ordains artists. They ordain themselves.
Just as Taleswapper had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter.

Orson Scott Card
He knew her too well to see her from the distance that pity requires. He loved her because he admired her. For bearing without complaint the burden the queen put on her. For still being gentle and loving when she had ample reason to be bitter.

Orson Scott Card
For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.

Orson Scott Card
I own the whole world, and folks haven't been keeping up too well on the payments.

Orson Scott Card
There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger.

Orson Scott Card