Best 643 quotes of Orson Scott Card on MyQuotes

Orson Scott Card

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    Orson Scott Card

    A broken clock is right two times a day.

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    Orson Scott Card

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

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    Orson Scott Card

    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Ah, I am the judge of dreams, and you are the judge of love. Well, I find you guilty of dreaming good dreams, and sentence you to a lifetime of working and suffering for the sake of your dreams. I only hope that someday you won't declare me innocent of the crime of loving you.

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    Orson Scott Card

    A library is the first step of a thousand journeys, portal to a thousand worlds.

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    Orson Scott Card

    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

    . . . All these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

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    Orson Scott Card

    All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

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    Orson Scott Card

    a lot of human behavior was really acting out our responses to dangers long past.

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    Orson Scott Card

    A man always assumes that others are as virtuous as himself

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    Orson Scott Card

    America is an empire that does not wish to be one ; we are easily discouraged from doing what must be done to maintain the global order that allows democracy and prosperity to flourish.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Americans love to pick up, move on, start over. But instead of being somebody fresh and new, they become somebody lonely and lost, or, far too often these days, they become nobody at all, a machine for satisfying hunger, without loyalty or honor or duty.

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    Orson Scott Card

    America's intellectual community has never been very bright. Or honest. They're all sheep, following whatever the intellectual fashion of the decade happens to be. Demanding that everyone follow their dicta in lockstep. Everyone has to be open-minded and tolerant of the things they believe, but God forbid they should ever concede, even for a moment, that someone who disagrees with them might have some fingerhold of truth.

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    Orson Scott Card

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

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    Orson Scott Card

    And above all, what does being liberal have to do with opposing, or, uh, supporting the war against terror? Our enemies in the war against terror are so anti-liberal that you would think it would be liberals leaping to protect the world from these monstrous ideologies.

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    Orson Scott Card

    And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.

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    Orson Scott Card

    And if you're going to criticize me for not finishing the whole thing and tying it up in a bow for you, why, do us both a favor and write your own damn book, only have the decency to call it a romance instead of a history, because history's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied. It ain't a pretty package, but then it's not your birthday that I know of so I'm under no obligation to give you a gift.

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    Orson Scott Card

    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

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

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    Orson Scott Card

    And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?

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    Orson Scott Card

    And yet.. even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident. A broken clock is right two times a day.

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    Orson Scott Card

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

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    Orson Scott Card

    Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

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    Orson Scott Card

    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

    A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets.

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    Orson Scott Card

    As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generaitons, giving brith to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire...I'll put it bluntly. Human beings are free excpet when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me - to find out what you're good for.

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    Orson Scott Card

    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was gross insult.

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    Orson Scott Card

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

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    Orson Scott Card

    At first he thought he felt bad because he was afraid of leading an army, but it wasn't true. He knew he'd make a good commander. He felt himself wanting to cry. He hadn't cried since the first few days of homesickness after he got here. He tried to put a name on the feeling that put a lump in his throat and made him sob silently, however much he tried to hold it down. He bit down on his hand to stop the feeling, to replace it with pain. It didn't help.

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    Orson Scott Card

    At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

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    Orson Scott Card

    At some point, every science fiction and fantasy story must challenge the reader's experience and learning. That's much of the reason why the genre is so open to experimentation and innovation that other genres reject--strangeness is our bread and butter. Spread it thick or slice it thin, it's still our staff of life.

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    Orson Scott Card

    A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging.

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    Orson Scott Card

    because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Before we are citizens, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.

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    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

    But Father has also taught him: Treat a man as if he had a fine reputation to protect, and he will usually endeavor to deserve it.

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    Orson Scott Card

    But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind. Are we absolutely sure that we ought to win this war?

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    Orson Scott Card

    But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and it’s crew just to catch me? I find that quite… flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain.

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    Orson Scott Card

    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

    But the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.

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    Orson Scott Card

    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.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

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    Orson Scott Card

    Civilisation is only a pretense. In crisis we have become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and instead becoming the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone we will use the moment it comes close enough