Ender's Game Quotes

Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

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.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first. - Ender

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

Remember, the enemy's gate is down.

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.

Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.

Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.

I also remembered that you were beautiful." "Memory does play tricks on us." "No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore.

You're a monster. Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise? No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. --From the Introduction

He could see Bonzo's anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hot, and so it used him.

I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.

I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.

We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake." "A habit.

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won

The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

I'm crazy," said Ender. "But I think I'm OK.

I'm putting you in Dink Meeker's toon. From now on, as far as you're concerned, Dink Meeker is God." "Then who are you?" "The personnel officer who hired God.

The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

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.

An enemy, Ender Wiggin," whispered the old man. "I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher.

At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

We're like the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, then eat the little brats alive.

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

I didn't want to see you." "They told me." "I was afraid that I'd still love you." "I hoped that you would.

None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing.

the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow.

The enemy gate is down.

The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.

What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.

Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.

Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.

You want to beat Peter?" she asked "No," he answered "Beat the buggers. Then come home and see who notices Peter Wiggen anymore. Look him in the eye when all the world loves and reveres you. That'll be defeat in his eyes, Ender, thats how you win" "You don't understand" he said "Yes i do" "No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter" "Then what do you want?" "I want him to love me

Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.

Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

People will always go. Always. They always believe the can make a better life than in the old world. What the hell, maybe they can.

All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.

It's what I was born for, isn't it? If I don't go, why am I alive?

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.

yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD! bernard said. really? dap said. i didn't know he was signed onto the system

because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what “just living” might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

I have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.

there were crimes and quarrels, alongside kindness and cooperation; there were people who loved each other and people who did not; it was a human world.

Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart.

Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.

If only we could have talked to you, the hive-queen said in Ender's words. But since it could not be, we ask only this: that you remember us, not as enemies, but as a tragic sisters, changed into foul shape by fate or God or evolution. If we had kissed, it would have been the miracle to make us human in each other's eyes. Instead we killed each other. But still we welcome you now as guestfriends. Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.

There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you.

Be proud, Bonito, pretty boy. You can go home and tell your father, Yes, I beat up Ender Wiggin, who was barely ten years old, and I was thirteen. And I had only six of my friends to help me, and somehow we managed to defeat him, even though he was naked and wet and alone--Ender Wiggin is so dangerous and terrifying it was all we could do not to bring two hundred.

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

We’re the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive.

If the other fellow can't tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn't trying to kill you.

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.

Then you're dead, too, sweet little sister.' Oh, yes,' said Valentine. 'They'll believe that. "I didn't know it would kill Andrew. And when he was dead, I didn't know it will kill Valentine too.

I love you Ender. More than ever. No matter what you decide.

Bonzo, he pre-cise. He so careful, he piss on a plate and never splash.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, and then happiness as we can manage it.... Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.

But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind. Are we absolutely sure that we ought to win this war?

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.

Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a lie.” “No. It’s just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war.

The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.

Colonel Graff: We won! That's all that matters. Ender Wiggin: No. The way we win matters.

I am a creature of chemicals.

Isolation is the optimum environment for creativity.

Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language - or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us read these stories that we know are not 'true' because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story.

That is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upwards from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets, and winds, and birds

You made them hate me." Said Ender "So? What will you do about it? Crawl in a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well better be." -Graff

Take me home, he said silently to Graff. In my dream you said you loved me. Take me home

I didn't want to hurt him!" Ender cried. "Why didn't he just leave me alone!

Will people really go?” “People always go. Always. They always believe they can make a better life than in the old world.

What am I now, Alai?" "Still good." "At what?" "At--anything. There's a million soldiers who'd follow you to the end of the universe." "I don't want to go to the end of the universe." "So where do you want to go? They'll follow you." I want to go home, thought Ender, but I don't know where it is.

Ender understood more than she said. Manipulation of gravity was one thing; deception by the officers was another; but the most important message was this: the adults are the enemy, not the other armies. They do not tell us the truth.

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, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.

And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in the very moment when I love them--" "You beat them." For a moment she was not afraid of his understanding. "No, you don't understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don't exist.

As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generaitons, giving brith to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire...I'll put it bluntly. Human beings are free excpet when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me - to find out what you're good for.

You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knos waht warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn't know. We made sure youo didn't know. You were reckless and brilliant and young. It's waht you were born for.

There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no on ewould save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken. The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.

Peace. That's what salaam means. Peace unto you." The words brought forth an echo from Ender's memory. His mother's voice reading to him softly, when he was very young. ... The kiss, the word, the peace were with him still. I am only what I remember, and Alai is my friend in a memory so intense that they can't tear him out. Like Valentine, the strongest memory of all.

I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the only rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on I am your teacher. I will devise the strategy of your army, and you will learn to be quick and discover what tricks the enemy has for you. Remember, boy. From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose.

Come on,” he said to Valentine one day. “Let’s fly away and live forever.” “We can’t,” she said. “There are miracles even relativity can’t pull off, Ender.” “We have to go. I’m almost happy here.” “So, stay.” “I’ve lived too long with pain. I won’t know who I am without it.” So they boarded a starship and went from world to world. Wherever they stopped, he was always Andrew Wiggin, itinerant speaker for the dead, and she was always Valentine, historian errant, writing down the stories of the living while Ender spoke the stories of the dead. And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for the world where the hive-queen could awaken and thrive in peace. He looked a long time.