Orson Scott Card Quotes

609 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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 never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don't lie.

Orson Scott Card
I be crazy too, little buddy, but at least when I be craziest, I be floating all alone in space and the crazy, she float out of me, she soak into the walls, and she don't come out till there be battles and little boys bump into the walls and squish out de crazy.

Orson Scott Card
Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.

Orson Scott Card
I'm a terrible salesman, he finally said. I always tell the truth about what I'm selling, and then nobody buys it.

Orson Scott Card
Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

Orson Scott Card
To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly.

Orson Scott Card
Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.

Orson Scott Card
Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.

Orson Scott Card