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Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card Quotes

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Famous Orson Scott Card Quotes

“Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing _Ender's Game_, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective--the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult's. ... _Ender's Game_ asserts the personhood of children, and those who are used to thinking of children in another way ... are going to find _Ender's Game_ a very unpleasant place to live.”

ChildrenPersonhood
Book:Ender’s Game
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“I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed -- or forced -- to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time.”

ThinkingGivingWellsChildrenStoriesRealityLightAblePastGivenProcessEventsIntellectualEvidenceAccountsIndependentMaintainingBeneficialSantaSanta ClausDisillusionmentPast EventsReconstructing
Author:Orson Scott Card
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“Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew." "He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six." "Right." "And you're the oldest." "Yes." "That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.”

KnowsChildrenPersonsSaidCareMotherThreeParentMistakeSawsWorstSixRaisesConclusionAdulthoodBarbariansAndrewBest PersonBad ParentOldest Child
Book:Xenocide: Volume Three of the Ender Quintet
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“The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.”

WantShouldChildrenDoeEnoughProblemSeemsGovernmentRunningStruggleOfficeElectionSurpriseDelightDiplomaChristmas Present
Book:Empire
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“I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsYearsWellsLooksChildrenBookIdeasSometimesCareKidsLosesCrazyNormalArmyLibraryFortyGood IdeasDesksCommandersNobody Cares
Book:Ender's Game Boxed Set: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow
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“That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no disaster, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third.”

PeopleWorldShouldHumansChildrenLawNightRaceMankindThirdsPopulationSpreadNobleDisasterLimitationTitlesHuman RaceGalaxyInvasionOther WorldsAnnihilationSurplus
Book:Ender's Game Boxed Set: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow
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“It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.”

HumansHeartChildrenWholeHelpingFeelingsHomeGivenEasyVoiceRaceSeeingArmsEarsHearingYour ChildrenHuman RaceLive Your LifeLapHis Smile
Book:Ender in Exile
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“That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. … Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.”

WayHumansChildrenImportantDifferencesInterestingStreetsHuman NatureNeededHungerStakesBullyIntelligence And Education
Book:Ender's Shadow
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“Legalizing gay marriage is not about making it possible for gay people to become couples. It's about giving the Left the power to force anti-religious values on our children. Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.”

PeopleGivingChildrenUseSchoolValuesLeftForceReligiousTeachCoupleGayOur ChildrenTraditionalIllegalGay MarriageHomophobiaGay PeopleAnti ReligiousTraditional ValuesReligious Values
Author:Orson Scott Card
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“How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.”

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Author:Orson Scott Card
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“Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings! It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees - knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.”

HumansChildrenLongTwoReligionDiesHuman BeingsForeverTreeGardenLong LifeTree Of LifeTree Of KnowledgeTwo Trees
Book:Ender's Shadow
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“There was no name for the disease; his body had gone insane, forgotten the blueprint by which human beings were built. Even now the disease still lives on in his children. Not in our bodies, but in our souls. We exist where normal human children are expected to be; we're even shaped the same. But each of us in our own way has been replaced by an imitation child, shaped out of a twisted, fetid, lipidous goiter that grew out of Father's soul.”

WayHumansChildrenHas BeensStillsSoulBodyFatherNamesHuman BeingsGoneGrewDiseaseNormalBuiltForgottenExpectedInsaneReplacedImitationTwistedBlueprintsStill Life
Book:Speaker for the Dead
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