If the followers of the Oversoul are kept blind, if they can’t judge the Oversoul’s purpose for themselves, then they aren’t freely choosing between good and evil, or between wise and foolish, but are only...

If you try and lose then it isn’t your fault. But if you don’t try and we lose, then it’s all your fault.

This emotion I’m feeling now, this is love, right?””I don’t know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you’re with me?””Yes,” she said.”That’s influenza,” said Miro. “Watch for nausea or...

When you have faith in something a lot of other people believe then you a member of the church” said Ceas, “When you have faith in something nobody believes, then you a complete wacko

For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary...

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.

My master wishes to see you,” said the mounted man.”When the planting’s done,” I said.”Lord Barton is unaccustomed to waiting.””Then he should rejoice, for he’ll learn something new today.” I went back to the garden....

But if you caught my informant,’ said Achilles, ‘why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and...

a lot of human behavior was really acting out our responses to dangers long past.

So the I.F. is spying on Earth.””Just as a mother spies on her children at play in the yard.””Good to know you’re looking out for us, Mummy.

—No me digas «No, Ender». He tardado mucho tiempo en darme cuenta de ello, pero créeme, me odiaba, me odio. Y todo se reduce a esto: en el momento en el que entiendo a mi...

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

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that ‘good’ is an infinitely recursive term – it can’t be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it’s better than bad, though why...

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors–we hope–of your life come from reading fiction.

Those eyes had seen people weep, and had cared, and had hurt them again anyway. It’s a look that no human eyes should ever have.

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.

I believe what Jesus said was, ‘I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive. But of you it is required that you forgive all men.

Sometimes lies are more dependable than the truth.

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...

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

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.

With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.

…What I depend on is a vigorous audience that can discover sweetness and light, beauty and truth, beyond the ability of the artist, on his own, to create them.

That’s what so many people didn’t understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake...

She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there’d be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than...

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.

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words,...

Remember, I’m the only person her who’s paid to be nice to you. But not too nice. Give me any lip and I’ll break your face. OK?

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

Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

[No single] explanation will ever contain the final answer for all time, for all hearers. There is always, ALWAYS more to learn.

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

Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don’t have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude...

we have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they’re workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we’re on the right track.

O my son Absalom,’ Bean said softly, knowing for the first time the kind of anguish that could tear such words from a man’s mouth. ‘my son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die...

Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was?

Miro, I’m so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I...

As Sarah watched them (Abraham and Isaac) move briskly along, she thought of the whole journey behind her. Her childhood in the Ur-of-the North, the temple of Asherah, her father’s house, the Euphrates in flood...

When a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him passage. You. Speaker—ever since I first...

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.

Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.

The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy.

All these uses a valid; all these reading of the book are “correct”. For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the...

Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives.Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their...

Carn Carby left, and ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

Home was merely a dull ache in the back of his memory. A tiredness in his eyes.

I want to see the king,” I said, after explaining who I was.”Wonderful,” said the ancient Nkumai who sat on a cushion near the corner pole of the house. “I’m glad for you.”That was all,...

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?

I have hope for you, if only because you’re the only one left to hope for.

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