Ender Quotes

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.

~ Orson Scott Card

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

There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you.

~ Orson Scott Card

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

~ Orson Scott Card

[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.

~ Orson Scott Card

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.

~ Orson Scott Card

I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.

~ Orson Scott Card

There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no on ewould save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

~ Orson Scott Card

When you walk on the face of a world, then forgiveness comes.

~ Orson Scott Card

That's what Ender has to understand. There really is evil in the world, and wickedness, and every brand of stupidity. There's meanness and heartlessness and... I don't even know which of them is me. - Hyrum Graff

~ Orson Scott Card

While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.

~ Orson Scott Card

As a child of privilege, no one is your friend. They will claim to be your friends, they will laugh at your jokes and invite you to their parties, but they do not like you. They like your power, they like what you will become someday.

~ Orson Scott Card

The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy.

~ Orson Scott Card

But most of those to whom Ender's Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of belonging.

~ Orson Scott Card

We don't punish the ones who fail. They just-don't go on

~ Orson Scott Card

For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.

~ Orson Scott Card

Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.

~ Orson Scott Card

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him...

~ Orson Scott Card

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

~ Orson Scott Card

I came because I've spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a chance to know the brother that I love, before it's too late, before we're not children anymore.

~ Orson Scott Card

When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end.

~ Orson Scott Card

The classes were valuable, but the real education was the game.

~ Orson Scott Card

He woke up and fought another battle and won. Then he went to bed and slept again and dreamed again and then he woke up and won again and slept again and he hardly noticed when waking became sleeping. Nor did he care.

~ Orson Scott Card

I'll go from world to world until I find a time and place where you can come awake in safety. And I'll tell your story to my people, so that perhaps in time the can forgive you, too. The way that you've forgiven me.

~ Orson Scott Card

Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings.

~ Orson Scott Card

So the whole war is beause we can't talk to each other.

~ Orson Scott Card

Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him

~ Orson Scott Card

Don't make fun of me! Ender said. I'm afraid I'm going crazy.

~ Orson Scott Card

I'll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I wont be fooled into it. I'll do it because I choose to, not because you tricked me, you sly bastard.

~ Orson Scott Card

It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it.

~ Orson Scott Card

You don't know what would have happened if I hadn't pushed. Nobody knows. I did it the way I did it, and it worked. Above all, it worked.

~ Orson Scott Card

I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve been through to get there.

~ Orson Scott Card

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

~ Orson Scott Card

He was not prepared to deal with my mistake, thought Jane, and he did not understand the suffering his response would cause me. He is innocent of wrong -doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on. It was a good decision, and Jane was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn't carry it out. Those few seconds in which parts of her mind came to a halt were not trivial in their effect on her. There was trauma, loss, change; she was not now the same being that she had been before. parts of her had died. Parts of her had become confused, out of order...She discovered, as many a living being had discovered, that rational decisions are far more easily made than carried out.

~ Orson Scott Card