Orson Scott Card Quotations

The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a stupid undergraduate, but which gave me the foundation of general knowledge that makes a career as a writer possible.

I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.

You who speak languages, you are such liars.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.

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

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die some times.

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.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

The best thing about my job, though, is stopping at the end of the day and rejoining the human universe.

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

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

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

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books.

Working is hard and distracts from having fun.

I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky.

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good,' to behave in a way that is for the benefit of the whole community.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.

Ulysses, obviously. It was an elaborate prank, and our supposed intellectual elite continue to fall for it.

My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again next week, you'll get a different answer.

Of course, I also hear from critics who detest what I do, and while sometimes I feel rather proud of having made various the loathsome people or groups angry, at other times I wonder why I put up with such grief.

One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.

My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer.

Everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

I have lived in the only decades I could have lived in, and hope to live through at least a few more.

I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

In all my study of history, I have never found a time or place I would rather have lived than now.

There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.

Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war.

Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.

Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a lie.” “No. It’s just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war.

Your ego-depletion seems problematically difficult to assuage.

Whoop-de-do," said Ram. "What?" "I'm celebrating." "Was that irony or loss of mental function?" asked the expendable. "Was that a rhetorical questions, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?" "I have no confidence in you, Ram," said the expendable. "Well, thanks." "You're welcome.

All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what “just living” might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified to the slightest degree, its authority is gone.

Everyone dies. Everyone leaves. What matters is the things you build together before they go. What matters is the part of them that continues in you when they're gone.

I've had your tears with mine, and you've had mine with yours. I think that's more intimate even than a kiss.

Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

This is the Speaker for the Dead? Judging someone by appearances?" "Maybe I've fallen in love with Grego." "You've always been a sucker for people who pee on you.

The univers is statistically more likely to be ironic than not,

We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams

I didn't want to see you." "They told me." "I was afraid that I'd still love you." "I hoped that you would.

I know everything I need to know already," Rigg always said... To which Father always replied,"See how ignorant you are? You don't even know why you need to know the things you don't know yet." "So tell me," said Rigg. "I would but you're too ignorant to understand the reasons why your ignorance is a fatal disease...

The tribe is whatever we believe it is. If we say the tribe is all the Little Ones in the forest, and all the trees, then that is what the tribe is. Even though some of the oldest trees here came from warriors of two different tribes, fallen in battle. We become one tribe because we say we're one tribe." Ender marveled at his mind, this small raman [member of another sentient species]. How few humans were able to grasp this idea, or let it extend beyond the narrow confines of their tribe, their family, their nation.

A broken clock is right two times a day.

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.

As history shows us, when colonization is voluntary, people will self-select better than any testing system. It’s like those foolish attempts to control immigration to American based on the traits that were deemed desirable, when in fact the only trait that defines Americans historically is “descended from somebody willing to give up everything to live there.” Willingness is the single most important test.

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed.

It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.

Peace. That's what salaam means. Peace unto you." The words brought forth an echo from Ender's memory. His mother's voice reading to him softly, when he was very young. ... The kiss, the word, the peace were with him still. I am only what I remember, and Alai is my friend in a memory so intense that they can't tear him out. Like Valentine, the strongest memory of all.

If you asked me to marry you all over again today I'd say yes, said Valentine. And if I had only met you for the first time today, I'd ask.

Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

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.

Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves- either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.

Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet.

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.

Science Fiction has rivets, fantasy has trees.

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.

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

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

A character is what he does, yes - but even more, a character is what he means to do.

Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother?

You can't change what you don't understand.

My own feeling is that human happiness is a very random thing, and bestows itself willy-nilly, and there's not much deserving about the matter.

Perhaps I'm hiding from myself. Perhaps I don't want to be what I'm supposed to be. Or perhaps I don't want to keep living the life I already started to live.

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

An eye for an eye? How Christian of you.' Unbelievers always want other people to act like Christians.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

Let me be loved like that, by a man who will not replace me with concubines when I'm old and ugly. Let me be loved by a man who loves God more than me.

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.

When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man.

An enemy, Ender Wiggin," whispered the old man. "I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher.

Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won

A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure that anyone who opposed them must be either stupid and decieved or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.

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.

History is an omlette. THe eggs are already broken.

Human: That's stupid. Isn't there grass on both sides?

Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.

Love is random; fear is inevitable.

Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.

Your trust in rationality makes you irrational.

When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew." "He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six." "Right." "And you're the oldest." "Yes." "That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow.

Grief,she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.

The most evil creatures dont desire the destruction of everythingthey only desire to exploit it for themselves.

Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.

If you read to your kids you'll make readers out of them, partly because they'll associate reading with good parent time.

If anyone have intercourse with a pig or a dog, he shall die. If a man have intercourse with a horse or a mule, there is no punishment. But he shall not approach the king, and shall not become a priest... If a pig spring upon a man for intercourse, there is no punishment.