Top 500 Orson Scott Card Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “We may be young, but we’re not powerless. We play by their rules long enough, and it becomes our game.”

— Orson Scott Card

152. “I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one.”

— Orson Scott Card

153. “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.”

— Orson Scott Card

154. “I didn’t want to hurt him!” Ender cried. “Why didn’t he just leave me alone!”

— Orson Scott Card

155. “Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “Salaam.” Then, red-faced, he turned away and walked to his own bed at the back of the barracks. Ender guessed that the kiss and the word were somehow forbidden. A suppressed religion, perhaps. Or maybe the word had some private and powerful meaning for Alai alone.”

— Orson Scott Card

156. “I don’t hate you, I love you, you’re part of myself, you’re my heart and when you go it’s my heart torn out and carried away –.”

— Orson Scott Card

157. “Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too. So they’d leave me alone.”

— Orson Scott Card

158. “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.”

— Orson Scott Card

159. “Two faces of the same coin. And I am the metal in between.”

— Orson Scott Card

160. “The old tale of Sleeping Beauty might end happily in French or English, but he was in Russia, and only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale.”

— Orson Scott Card

161. “From all wise men, O Lord, protect us.”

— Orson Scott Card

162. “That’s how they think of me, too. Teacher. Legendary soldier. Not one of them. Not someone that you embrace and whisper Salaam in his ear. That only lasted while Ender still seemed a victim. Still seemed vulnerable. Now he was the master soldier, and he was completely, utterly alone.”

— Orson Scott Card

163. “We are like you; the thought pressed into his mind. We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again. 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. How were we to know? We could live with you in peace. Believe us, believe us, believe us.”

— Orson Scott Card

164. “The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending-the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.”

— Orson Scott Card

165. “I hope you had fun, I hope you had a nice, nice time being happy, Ender. It might be the last time in your life.”

— Orson Scott Card

166. “I love you Ender. More than ever. No matter what you decide.”

— Orson Scott Card

167. “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.”

— Orson Scott Card

168. “It’s a stupid leader who can’t turn follower when somebody offers him a wiser course.”

— Orson Scott Card

169. “Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy.”

— Orson Scott Card

170. “You want to make me the best soldier possible. Go down and look at the standings. Look at the all-time standings. So far you’re doing an excellent job with me. Congratulations. Now when are you going to put me up against a good army?”

— Orson Scott Card

171. “Ender didn’t like fighting. He didn’t like Peter’s kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn’t like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.”

— Orson Scott Card

172. “I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love.”

— Orson Scott Card

173. “I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”

— Orson Scott Card

174. “I think you don’t grow up until you stop worrying about other people’s purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.”

— Orson Scott Card

175. “Mazer, i don’t want to keep dreaming these things. I’m afraid to sleep. I keep thinking of things i don’t want to remember. My whole life keeps playing out as if i were a recorder and someone else wanted to watch the most terrible parts of my life.”

— Orson Scott Card

176. “Never take another human being to the third life, because we don’t know how to go.”

— Orson Scott Card

177. “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.”

— Orson Scott Card

178. “Why else do we read anyway? I think most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-real world. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.”

— Orson Scott Card

179. “In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.? What is it then?? It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.”

— Orson Scott Card

180. “It’s the teachers, they’re the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other.”

— Orson Scott Card

181. “The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.”

— Orson Scott Card

182. “The boy whose arm he had broken was out for vengeance. His name, Ender quickly learned, was Bernard. He spoke his own name with a French accent, since the French, with their arrogant Separatism, insisted that the teaching of Standard not begin until the age of four, when the French language patterns were already set. His accent made him exotic and interesting; his broken arm made him a martyr; his sadism made him a natural focus for all those who loved pain in others.”

— Orson Scott Card

183. “The most noble title any child can have, Demosthenes wrote, is third.”

— Orson Scott Card

184. “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.”

— Orson Scott Card

185. “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.”

— Orson Scott Card

186. “That’s the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.”

— Orson Scott Card

187. “Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.”

— Orson Scott Card

188. “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.”

— Orson Scott Card

189. “I looked for perfection, and I found something better.”

— Orson Scott Card

190. “The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win.”

— Orson Scott Card

191. “Peter, why do I get the idea that you are thinking of this as a golden opportunity for Peter Wiggin?” “For both of us, Val.” “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.” “But we don’t think like other children, do we, Val? We don’t talk like other children. And above all, we don’t write like other children.” “For a discussion that began with death threats, Peter, we’ve strayed from the topic, I think.”

— Orson Scott Card

192. “Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything i felt. More than ever, i need that now.”

— Orson Scott Card

193. “Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in our lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.”

— Orson Scott Card

194. “Madness, and then illumination.”

— Orson Scott Card

195. “A good commander, thought Ender, doesn’t have to make stupid threats.”

— Orson Scott Card

196. “I sold my brother,” Valentine said, “and they paid me for it.”

— Orson Scott Card

197. “He could see Bonzo’s anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender’s anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo’s was hot, and so it used him.”

— Orson Scott Card

198. “I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love. My parents died so others could live; now I live, so others must die.”

— Orson Scott Card

199. “Everybody thinks Hitler got to power because of his armies, because they were willing to kill, and that’s partly true, because in the real world power is always built on the threat of death and dishonor. But mostly he got to power on words, on the right words at the right time.”

— Orson Scott Card

200. “I want to go home, thought Ender, but I don’t know where it is.”

— Orson Scott Card