Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

The desire to force others to bend or break to her will was always there, usually hidden deeply enough that she could forget she had that wish within her, but occasionally surfacing to dangle the ripe fruit of power just out of her reach. She knew, as few others did, that the power to coerce depended entirely on the fear or weakness of other human beings. It was possible to use coercion, yes, but in the end you found yourself surrounded only by the weak and fearful, with all those of courage and strength arrayed against you.

Orson Scott Card
Men like Jackson were so upright and honest-seeming, but Hooch knew that there wasn't no such thing as a good man, just a man who wasn't bought yet, or wasn't in deep enough trouble, or didn't have the guts to reach out and take what he wanted. That's all that virtue ever boiled down to, so far as Hooch ever saw in his life.

Orson Scott Card
Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness.

Orson Scott Card
Such a darling child, they would say, and pat her head. And Miriam would answer in her heart: you made my father a slave. You want us all dead. You are the river, you and all of Egypt. You are the river and as long as we stay beside you we are in danger of drowning.

Orson Scott Card
I've done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.
In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.
He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.
An obnoxious child.

Orson Scott Card
Your father cares as little as we do. It's just that he tends to despair, while we are full of hope.

Orson Scott Card
I'm passing through the world invisibly. Even when people see or speak to me it's as if I didn't exist, as if I had no right to exist. I tread across their lands and they don't see me. I act and act and act and nothing makes any difference in the world. But they touch me.

Orson Scott Card
In a way, he lost some of himself, some of his knack, and therefore some of the choices he might have had in life. But in losing those, he gained so much more freedom, so much more power, that he was clear winner in the bargain.

Orson Scott Card
The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.

Orson Scott Card
Yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD! bernard said. really? dap said. i didn't know he was signed onto the system

Orson Scott Card
They never noticed that he was in fact what they only pretended to be.

Orson Scott Card
Be proud, Bonito, pretty boy. You can go home and tell your father, Yes, I beat up Ender Wiggin, who was barely ten years old, and I was thirteen. And I had only six of my friends to help me, and somehow we managed to defeat him, even though he was naked and wet and alone—Ender Wiggin is so dangerous and terrifying it was all we could do not to bring two hundred.

Orson Scott Card
I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female.

Orson Scott Card
It is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent.

Orson Scott Card
But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost.

Orson Scott Card
First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left?

Orson Scott Card
Are you all right, sir? asked Hezekiah.
Just fighting over old battles in my mind, said John. It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays.

Orson Scott Card
Maybe he's growing up.
Or maybe he just needed the right circumstances to discover the best in himself.

Orson Scott Card
He's young, she said.
We've all been guilty of that sin, said Alvin. And some never get over it.

Orson Scott Card
There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

Orson Scott Card
He would rather lose his power for doing right, than keep his power by doing wrong. Because he loves his people more than he loves his office.

Orson Scott Card
I'll have that someday, thought Peter. Someone who'll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things turn out.

Orson Scott Card
At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

Orson Scott Card
Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever.

Orson Scott Card
He is dead, she thought bitterly, because we have forgotten him.

Orson Scott Card
What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never know why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even know themselves. Nobody understands anybody.

Orson Scott Card
We've devoted our lives to learning about them!" Miro said. Ender stopped. "Not from them.

Orson Scott Card
If the other fellow can't tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn't trying to kill you.

Orson Scott Card
Someone's sent a loving note in lines of returning geese and as the moon fills my western chamber as petals dance over the flowing stream again I think of you the two of us living a sadness apart a hurt that can't be removed yet when my gaze comes down my heart stays up

Orson Scott Card
I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don't want to go through what you've been through to get there.

Orson Scott Card