Quotes From "Xenocide" By Orson Scott Card

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed. Orson Scott Card

It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone. Orson Scott Card

Someone's senta loving notein lines of returning geeseand as the moon fillsmy western chamberas petals danceover the flowing streamagain I think of youthe two of usliving a sadnessaparta hurt that can't be removedyet when my gaze comes downmy heart stays up 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

I know that you are wise. When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence… You believe that the story is true, because you responded to it from that sense of truth deep within you. But that sense of truth does not respond to a story's factuality..[rather] to a story's causality - whether it faithfully shows the way the universe functions. Orson Scott Card

When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man. Orson Scott Card

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. . Orson Scott Card

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven. Orson Scott Card

Hive Queen: So many of your people are becoming Christians. Believing in the god these humans brought with them. Human: You don’t believe in God?Hive Queen: The question never came up. We have always remembered how we began. Human: You evolved. We were created. Hive Queen: By a virus. Human: By a virus that God created in order to create us. Hive Queen: So you, too, are a believer. Human: I understand belief. Hive Queen: No–you desire belief. Human: I desire it enough to act as if I believed. Maybe that’s what faith is. Hive Queen: Or deliberate insanity. Orson Scott Card

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

Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss. Orson Scott Card

Madness, and then illumination. Orson Scott Card

You will soon learn that there ARE no strange stars, no alien skies"- No?"Only skies and stars, in all their varieties. Each one with its own flavour, and all flavours good"- Now YOU think like a tree. Flavours! Of skies! " I have tasted the heat of many stars, and all of them were sweet Orson Scott Card

Human beings *do* metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered. Orson Scott Card

Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely. Orson Scott Card

If you asked me to marry you all over again today I'd say yes, said Valentine.And if I had only met you for the first time today, I'd ask. Orson Scott Card

If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal. Orson Scott Card

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

Let me tell you about gods, " said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them. . Orson Scott Card

He wasn't telling her what the gods were, he was telling her what goodness was. To want other people to grow. To want other people to have all the good things that you have. And to spare them the bad things if you can. That was goodness. Orson Scott Card

Never believe a rumor of my death, ' said Peter. 'I have as many lives as a cat. Also as many teeth, as many claws, and the same cheery, cooperative disposition. Orson Scott Card

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 themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts. Pequenino: While collectively.. Hive Queen: Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.> Pequenino: So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals-- and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with. Hive Queen: Exactly. Orson Scott Card

If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make.. So-- as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of hour behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down, one by one, then you can always say, look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to.. Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. . Orson Scott Card

The only way to retrieve a secret, once known, is to replace it with a lie. Orson Scott Card