Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it, either. Government office should be received like a child's Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

Orson Scott Card
If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable things they do.

Orson Scott Card
Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves.

Orson Scott Card
Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent.

Orson Scott Card
The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell.

Orson Scott Card
The priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppeteer. If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make.

Orson Scott Card
Give the universe a push, and you don't know which dominoes will fall. There are always a few you never thought were connected.

Orson Scott Card
Sometimes you have to trust people enough to let them succeed and love them enough to let them fail.

Orson Scott Card
To have a choice at all is to be free - even when the choice is between two terrible things.

Orson Scott Card
Most victories came from instantly exploiting your enemy's stupid mistakes, and not from any particular brilliance in your own plan.

Orson Scott Card
Your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

Orson Scott Card
.. All these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

Orson Scott Card
You can't rule out the impossible, because you never know which of your assumptions about what was possible might turn out in the real universe to be false.

Orson Scott Card
You grow a whole lot more as a writer by getting old stories out of the house and letting new ones come in and live with you until they grow up and are ready to go. Don't let the old ones stay there and grow fat and cranky and eat all the food out of the refrigerator. You have dozens of generations of stories inside you, but the only way to make room for the new ones is to write the old ones and mail them off.

Orson Scott Card
Even the most introverted person alive is constantly hungry for human association

Orson Scott Card
How clever of me. I have found such a pathway into hell that I can never get back out.

Orson Scott Card
The nations that offer to arbitrate are the ones that think they should rule the world.

Orson Scott Card
When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything?

Orson Scott Card
Ho said, 'I do not grieve because my feet have been cut off. I grieve because a precious jewel is dubbed a mere stone, and a man of integrity is called a deceiver. This is why I weep.'

Orson Scott Card
Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings! It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees - knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.

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
I merely observe that all living things are manipulated. As long as there is a will, it is bent and twisted constantly. Only the dead are allowed the luxury of freedom, and then only because they want nothing, and therefore can't be thwarted.

Orson Scott Card
When there aren't any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.

Orson Scott Card
Science fiction is about what could be but isn't; fantasy is about what couldn't be.

Orson Scott Card
All the universe is just a dream in God's mind, and as long as he's asleep, he believes in it, and things stay real.

Orson Scott Card
The only people who think children are carefree are the ones who've forgotten their own childhood.

Orson Scott Card
Come in, Bean. Come in Julian Delphiki, longed-for child of good and loving parents. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the Fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life.

Orson Scott Card
In creating the strange milieu in which your story takes place, you must first understand as well as you possibly can the familiar milieu in which your own life is taking place. Until you have examined and comprehended the world around you, you can't possibly create a complex and believable imaginary world.

Orson Scott Card
At some point, every science fiction and fantasy story must challenge the reader's experience and learning. That's much of the reason why the genre is so open to experimentation and innovation that other genres reject--strangeness is our bread and butter. Spread it thick or slice it thin, it's still our staff of life.

Orson Scott Card
People love to hear the brag of the local boy, because they want him to be great, but the foreigner must deny that he has any outstanding virtue - this is what will endear him to the locals.

Orson Scott Card