Orson Scott Card

Sometimes those who care for the whole community must act in a way that harms the individual. For a good man it never becomes easy and he avoids it when he can; but when people need him to be harsh, he will be harsh indeed, and he won't shrink from it, he'll do it with his own hand and let it be known what he does.

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.

We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts.

I believe in everything that seems true to me right now. I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe in now turn out to be false later.

Only boys were so foolish that they actually believed their arguments were their reasons.

He hated the way they thought. He hated the way they didn't think. It was hard to imagine which of them he hated more.

I'll be dead and you'll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!

Boys always argued as if they knew then had the forces of logic on their side, even when they were being completely irrational.

What difference does it make, whether we keep our silence because [they] force us or because we're afraid they might force us?

You're the only one that I would be glad to be close to forever, because all your secrets are bright and good and I love you for them.

Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyways.

That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It's how you're remembered. It's what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival.