Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

Orson Scott Card
Lookit that, he said. A lawyer who knows how to do something useful. That's a miracle.

Orson Scott Card
And then he realized that he could never make anything out of the Unmaker, could never make the Unmaker do or be anything because it was only Undoing and Unbeing. It wasn't the Unmaker he needed to call to, it was all the living things around him, the trees, the grass, the earth, the air itself. It was the greensong that he needed to restore.

Orson Scott Card
No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

Orson Scott Card
I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb.

Orson Scott Card
Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.

Orson Scott Card
Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth.

Orson Scott Card
I don't know why people who got what they need to be happy don't just go ahead and be happy.

Orson Scott Card
As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to naught in the end?... And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done.

Orson Scott Card
Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in our lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.

Orson Scott Card
We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.

Orson Scott Card
A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.

Orson Scott Card
They won't be required to sacrifice anything in order to belong to your assembly. A religion that is all sweetness, but no light; all form, but no substance; all tradition, but no precept.

Orson Scott Card
Honesty always sounds like impudence to the vain and stupid.

Orson Scott Card
Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.

Orson Scott Card
This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard.

Orson Scott Card
Maybe she couldn't know who she was today. Maybe it was enough to know that she was no longer who she was before.

Orson Scott Card
It made me wonder if perhaps our ancestors' crimes were not in fact far more terrible than they claimed. After all, the only histories we possessed told their version of what happened, and in their accounts they were completely innocent.

Orson Scott Card
Heroes and victims are the product of the mood they were in when opportunity came or when circumstances were at their worst.

Orson Scott Card
Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?

Orson Scott Card
This man, though, was of that rare type that knew what he wanted but didn't want anything badly enough to demand it or beg for it or hurt anyone else in the process of getting it.

Orson Scott Card
I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.

Orson Scott Card
Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

Orson Scott Card
Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn't quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?

Orson Scott Card
Out of respect for custom he treats me as if all women were equally worthless. He gives custom more respect than he gives me.

Orson Scott Card