Orson Scott Card quotes - page 18

Humans, in order to rise above the animals, had learned how to convert themselves into nothing more than organs or limbs or even disposable fingernails and hair of a larger metaphorical organism. (Orson Scott Card)
We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts. View quote
Orson Scott Card
The billion billion paths of his life lay open before him, waiting for his first choices, for the first changes in the world around him to eliminate a million futures every second. View quote
Orson Scott Card
I walked down the hill, forgot philosophy, and joined the human race again. Nobody was particularly glad to see me. View quote
Orson Scott Card
What Alvin figured out was that when you're Making, you don't use people like tools. You don't wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they're right. View quote
Orson Scott Card
'Waterloo was won,'" quoted Rackham, "'on the playing fields of Eton.'" "What the hell does that mean?" asked Carn Carby. "You never even went to Eton." "It was an analogy," said Rackham. "If you hadn't spent your entire childhood playing war games, you'd actually know something. You're all so uneducated. View quote
Orson Scott Card
"I was ordained,” said the preacher. "No one ordains artists. They ordain themselves.” Just as Taleswapper had expected. The preacher retreated to authority as soon as he feared his ideas could not stand on their own merit. Reasonable argument was impossible when authority became the arbiter. View quote
Orson Scott Card
Will I be coming to you as husband or a child? A partner or a student? View quote
Orson Scott Card
Are you all right, sir?” asked Hezekiah. "Just fighting over old battles in my mind,” said John. "It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays. View quote
Orson Scott Card
I have no secret thoughts... Or rather, they're not secret because I've withheld them - if they're unknown, it's because no one asked. View quote
Orson Scott Card
Even the good she found in him was really the goodness she had put in him, the goodness he had put on himself as a disguise in order to get her to marry him. (Orson Scott Card)
He was growing up. Soon he would be a man. He wondered what that would mean. Surely he could not have more required of him as an adult that had been required of him as a child. There could not be more. View quote
Orson Scott Card
What does it matter if, by following my heart, I also fulfill someone else's plan? View quote
Orson Scott Card
Honesty always sounds like impudence to the vain and stupid. View quote
Orson Scott Card
Wanting to is the whole lesson; all the rest is practice. View quote
Orson Scott Card
I've never seen a soft heart turn hard,” said Taleswapper. "At least not without good reason. View quote
Orson Scott Card
Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together. View quote
Orson Scott Card
I'm a terrible salesman,” he finally said. "I always tell the truth about what I'm selling, and then nobody buys it. View quote
Orson Scott Card
Once he had been so formidable that he was surrounded by enemies. Now even his enemies has lost interest in him. What clearer sign of failure could you find than that? View quote
Orson Scott Card
Verily wondered what the man could have the audacity to say, in the face of such evidence-what whining, sniveling complaint or protest he might utter. View quote
Orson Scott Card
The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals. The choices they made were real. They mattered. (Orson Scott Card)
You think this because you are a nasty person by nature, Calvin, and you don't understand nice people. To you, the end of existence is to control things, and so you will never build anything, but rather will try to take control of what is already in existence. Your brother, though, is by nature a Maker, as you explain it; therefore he cares nothing about who rules, but only about what exists. View quote
Orson Scott Card
They never noticed that he was in fact what they only pretended to be. View quote
Orson Scott Card
Boys always argued as if they knew then had the forces of logic on their side, even when they were being completely irrational. View quote
Orson Scott Card
To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people living them could not possibly understand. That truth is always out of reach. View quote
Orson Scott Card