Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how "important" it is?

Orson Scott Card
The doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future.

Orson Scott Card
The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.

Orson Scott Card
You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they'll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don't change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully.

Orson Scott Card
Sickness and healing are in every heart; death and deliverance in every hand.

Orson Scott Card
They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer.

Orson Scott Card
We're both damaged property, I guess.
Plenty of time for renovation.

Orson Scott Card
I've never seen a soft heart turn hard, said Taleswapper. At least not without good reason.

Orson Scott Card
Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable.

Orson Scott Card
It's easy to manipulate your children when they're absolutely sure you're stupid.

Orson Scott Card
Our savior will resurrect us, said Peggy, but I haven't noticed that Christians end up any less dead at the end of life than heathens.

Orson Scott Card
It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.

Orson Scott Card
She never seemed to get near the edge. She lived on other people's edges. And when they fell off, she'd admire how pretty they looked as they fell.

Orson Scott Card
I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.

Orson Scott Card
If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.

Orson Scott Card
Wasn't that their natural right, to know the truth so as to be able to let the truth lead them to do good or evil, as they chose?

Orson Scott Card
What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.

Orson Scott Card
Peggy chose her words to be true, and therefore beautiful, and therefore good.

Orson Scott Card
All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That's why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.

Orson Scott Card
Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time.

Orson Scott Card
If a father commands a son to commit a crime so terrible that the son can't do it and live with himself, then is it betrayal for the son to disobey his father?

Orson Scott Card
Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, Where there's smoke there's fire, when the saying should have been, Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.

Orson Scott Card
Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he'd stay stupid.

Orson Scott Card
Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.

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
Law can change how people behave when others are watching — that's all.

Orson Scott Card
It was not love at all, really, but rather a yearning for the honor and respect of the other men that held them. Pride, then... Indeed, all their connection with each other at this moment was tied up with the respect they felt they were earning by their actions.

Orson Scott Card
The man who has an intelligent child is doomed to spend his life justifying every decision he makes.

Orson Scott Card
Black with hate, said Becca. You are gathering your people with hate.
Can you imagine conducting a war with love? asked Ta-Kumsaw.
That's a reason to refuse to make war at all, she said gently.

Orson Scott Card