Orson Scott Card Quotes

“I've done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.”
“In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.”
“He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.”
“An obnoxious child.”

When I am drunk I am at my best. It is the national knack of the French.

“Am I hired?”
“There is no legal way you can get me out of paying that much of my taxes.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Wiggin. The tax laws are designed to trick people into paying more than they have to. That way the rich who are in the know get to take advantage of drastic tax breaks, while those who don’t have such good connections and haven’t yet found an accountant who does are tricked into paying ludicrously higher amounts.”

How short life is for fools.

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.

How could you tell, when utter honesty and cynical manipulation would each account completely for the things she said and did?

There's some people who do things so bad it tears the fabric of the world, and then there's some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn. They see things, they know things, only they're so good and pure that they don't understand what it is that they're seeing.

The most evil creatures don’t desire the destruction of everything—they only desire to exploit it for themselves.

That's the way it was then, you see. Folks noticed other people's trouble every bit as quick as if it was their own.

Do you speak Scorn and Mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?

Keeping secrets was the beginning of freedom.

“Are all Polish men as arrogant and intrusive and rude as you?”
“Few measure up to my standards, but most try.”

Nafai knew the rule: when a man acts like a child, he's boyish, and everyone's delighted; when a boy acts the same way, he's childish, and everyone tells him to be a man.

I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female.

No man can bear to live with a woman who speaks nothing but the truth to him.