Explore Quotes by 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.

I'm not a liar, sir,' she said. "'No, I'm sure you sincerely become whatever it is you're pretending to be.

That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. … Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.

I have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were their words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.

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

I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.

So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it. But he has now learned something very important about human nature. If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth.

The most noble title any child can have, Demosthenes wrote, is Third.

Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.

I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK.

Nonsense," said Graff. "Ender always has plans within plans.

It's about me, or people wouldn't be so anxious to keep me from knowing about it. The absence of information is information. ~ Ender

This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.

You killed more people than anybody in history." "Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.

We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.

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.

Intellectual understanding does not always bring visceral belief.

Darkness bound them closer than light.

He loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.