Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

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's easy to manipulate your children when they're absolutely sure you're stupid.

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

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

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

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

Orson Scott Card
She grunted. Nothing unusual?
That's right.
Well, if you ask me, that's pretty unusual right there, if a body was smart enough to notice it.

Orson Scott Card
You're a monster. Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise? No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.

Orson Scott Card
It was all your genes that made us geniuses, mom. said peter. we sure didn't get any from dad. i heard that. father said, not looking up from the news that was being displayed on the table while he ate it would've been wasted if you hadn't

Orson Scott Card
The seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

Orson Scott Card
You just refuse to leave them alone until they change their minds. Of their own free will.

Orson Scott Card
If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?

Orson Scott Card
I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love.

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
Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.

Orson Scott Card
Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man's sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman's throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer's table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk.

Orson Scott Card
Justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all.

Orson Scott Card
No, no, no, Hooch told himself silently. Getting even don't amount to nothing in this world. Getting even only gets you behind. The best revenge is to get rich enough to make them all call you sir, that's how you get even with these boys.

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

Orson Scott Card