# Quote — Orson Scott Card, Prentice Alvin

> Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you.

- Author: [Orson Scott Card](https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card.md)
- Book: [Prentice Alvin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/prentice-alvin.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card#Prentice_Alvin_(1989)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/prentice-alvin/perhaps-you-dont

## More from this book

> Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he'd stay stupid.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/prentice-alvin/last-night-alvin.md)

> Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/prentice-alvin/was-it-worth.md)

> You can't change what you don't understand.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/orson-scott-card/prentice-alvin/you-cant-change.md)