Orson Scott Card Quotes - Page 6

That's the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.

You're bigger than I remember," she said stupidly.
"You too," he said. "I also remember that you were beautiful."
"Memory does play tricks on us."
"No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore. Come on. Let's go out into the lake.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

The have influence, but no power."
"In my experience, influence is power.

In my experience, influence is power.

Achilles acted as if he had already won, and because the other kids followed him, he had.

I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two.
The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew.
The changeless part was always true, The growing part was always new,
And I wondered, when the tale was through, Which part was me, and which was you.

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.

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors-we hope-of your life come from reading fiction.

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.

All these uses a valid; all these reading of the book are "correct". For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world of Ender's Game, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.

A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

I stole their future from them; I can only being to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.

Everyone was always in such a rush to shoot forward that they never took the time to look back. Which was a mistake. If you wanted to avoid snags, kinks, knots, and cuts, you had to "keep your mind on your line," as the saying went.

I cut the wood however I like, but it's the grain that decides the strength and shape of it. You can add and subtract memories from people, but it isn't just your memory that makes you who you are. There's something in the grain of the mind.

If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.