Top 500 Orson Scott Card Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “I don’t believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.”

— Orson Scott Card

402. “Power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it.”

— Orson Scott Card

403. “History’s got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can’t be untied.”

— Orson Scott Card

404. “Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody’s dazzling language – or at least I hope that’s not our reason. I think that most of us 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-story.”

— Orson Scott Card

405. “Maybe we’re the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.”

— Orson Scott Card

406. “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?”

— Orson Scott Card

407. “We live in a time when moderates are treated worse than extremists, being punished as if they were more fanatical than the actual fanatics.”

— Orson Scott Card

408. “We don’t admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.”

— Orson Scott Card

409. “What you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he’s done, and that’s as good as any man ever gets.”

— Orson Scott Card

410. “A non-materialist. And yet you are unpleasantly fat. A gluttonous ascetic? Such a contradiction.”

— Orson Scott Card

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

— Orson Scott Card

412. “These children had never looked death in the face and then chosen to live anyway.”

— Orson Scott Card

413. “It has been my experience that the better a man you are, the more folks there are who resent you for it, and find occasion to get angry at you no matter how kindly meant your deeds may be.”

— Orson Scott Card

414. “The Lord took twice the time making thee, Alvin Smith, cause it took that long to put the mischief in.”

— Orson Scott Card

415. “When both parties are lying and they both know the other party’s lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.”

— Orson Scott Card

416. “Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.”

— Orson Scott Card

417. “Better to have the trust of the people than their respect. With trust, their respect could be earned later; without it, respect could never be deserved, and so to have it would be like poison.”

— Orson Scott Card

418. “Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind.”

— Orson Scott Card

419. “Names come and go. They get attached to you, and then you lose them, and they get attached to someone else.”

— Orson Scott Card

420. “That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no disaster, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. “The most noble title any child can have,” Demosthenes wrote, “is Third.”

— Orson Scott Card

421. “He was much more useful as a name and a story than he would ever be as an inconvenient flesh-and-blood person.”

— Orson Scott Card

422. “Evil isn’t best served by equally evil servants.”

— Orson Scott Card

423. “It was astonishingly light, to hold all the hope and future of a great race within it.”

— Orson Scott Card

424. “He was cold and tired, but he ignored the cold. Around him stars shone. Some bright, some dim, the most constant things in life. Segundo smiled up at them, happy at least to be dying among friends.”

— Orson Scott Card

425. “You underestimate yourself.”

— Orson Scott Card

426. “Maybe it isn’t based on what you deserve. Maybe it’s based on what you need.”

— Orson Scott Card

427. “As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire...”

— Orson Scott Card

428. “It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit.”

— Orson Scott Card

429. “When you really know someone, you can’t hate him.”

— Orson Scott Card

430. “As for Peter – we didn’t even suggest a meeting, and so he didn’t have a chance to tell us to go to hell.”

— Orson Scott Card

431. “This emotion I’m feeling now, this is love, right?”

— Orson Scott Card

432. “We do what we must to earn our place in the community, but we live for the hours at home. For each other, for the children. It will never get me written up in the history books.”

— Orson Scott Card

433. “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.”

— Orson Scott Card

434. “It wasn’t so bad being a slave when your owner was yourself and stood up for you.”

— Orson Scott Card

435. “I didn’t know how you’d get us out of that last one. But you did. You were good.”

— Orson Scott Card

436. “Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him.”

— Orson Scott Card

437. “See how ignorant you are? You don’t even know why you need to know the things you don’t know yet.”

— Orson Scott Card

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

— Orson Scott Card

439. “Then he was done. He pulled away, rolled onto his back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re welcome,” she said. She believed in answering what people meant, not what they said.”

— Orson Scott Card

440. “You are the least-alone person I have ever known. Your heart has always included within it everyone who let you love them, and many who did not.”

— Orson Scott Card

441. “But I’m three times your age or more and my brain is worn out and full up. I don’t have much room to tuck new things square inside; they just cling to the outside for a while and drop off.”

— Orson Scott Card

442. “Working is hard and distracts from having fun.”

— Orson Scott Card

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443. “Well, how do I know that they don’t know the answer unless I ask?”

— Orson Scott Card

444. “The snake began to unweave itself from the rug again, only this time Ender did not hesitate. He stepped on the head of the snake and crushed it under his foot. It writhed and twisted under him, and in response he twisted and ground it deeper into the stone floor. Finally it was still. Ender picked it up and shook it, until it unwove itself and the pattern in the rug was gone. Then, still dragging the snake behind him, he began to look for a way out.”

— Orson Scott Card

445. “Besides,” said Rigg-the-killer, “I don’t want to leave the future of the human race on both planets in the tiny little hands of the sentient mice of Odinfold.”

— Orson Scott Card

446. “No, the hurts of the mind were too strange, too invisible, too magical to hope for the same kind of tolerance and help from even the best of people. It frightens me, thought DeAnne. Why should I expect others to be better than I am?”

— Orson Scott Card

447. “It’s called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.”

— Orson Scott Card

448. “Unless he’s really clever,” said Theresa. “Smarter than us?” said Peter. He and John Paul looked at each other. Then both of them shook their heads, said, “Naw,” and then burst out laughing.”

— Orson Scott Card

449. “What a waste of time to be posthumously famous.”

— Orson Scott Card

450. “As the proverb said, “Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night.” Too late for thinking now. Too early for eating.”

— Orson Scott Card