Pathfinder Orson Scott Card Quotes

For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.

Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing.

A regime that wraps itself in the flag of truth fears truth most of all, for if its story is falsified to the slightest degree, its authority is gone.

But Father has also taught him: Treat a man as if he had a fine reputation to protect, and he will usually endeavor to deserve it.

A person is what he says and does; that's how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.

No one can know a false thing, one can only believe it with certainty until it is contradicted. (Page 7)

She likes us,” said Umbo. “I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.” “Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.” “They were delicious.

Your ego-depletion seems problematically difficult to assuage.

The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community.

Maybe I will do what I want with my life! The only problem is that I have no idea what I want to do with it.

Whoop-de-do," said Ram. "What?" "I'm celebrating." "Was that irony or loss of mental function?" asked the expendable. "Was that a rhetorical questions, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?" "I have no confidence in you, Ram," said the expendable. "Well, thanks." "You're welcome.

(Rigg) had often complained that all these languages were useless, and Father had only said, "A man who speaks but one language understands none.

Government is all show when it isn't murder in the dark ... or soldiers in the open.

He committed the crime of stupidity while under my command," said Citizen. "Oh my," said Rigg. "They're handing out the death penalty for that these days?

We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it," said the expendable. "Meaning I gave you what you wanted?" "Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked.

I know everything I need to know already," Rigg always said... To which Father always replied,"See how ignorant you are? You don't even know why you need to know the things you don't know yet." "So tell me," said Rigg. "I would but you're too ignorant to understand the reasons why your ignorance is a fatal disease...

I've thought of all the questions," said Father. "That only means you've stopped trying to think of new ones.

Saving the human race is a frantic one. Or a tedious one. It all depends on what stage of the process you're taking part in.

But I'm three times your age or more and my brain is worn out and full up. I don't have much room to tuck new things square inside; they just cling to the outside for a while and drop off.

Could you possibly be a little more incoherent?" asked Olivenko. "There are bits of this I'm almost understanding, and I'm sure that's not what you have in mind.

We are who we are. When changes come, we start with what we are right then, and then we work to try to become whoever we need to be.

I suppose this means you can swim after all. Or am I supposed to tow you?" "If you really try," said Loaf, grinning, "you might not die.

Then, as Father had trained him, Rigg thought past his feelings.

See how ignorant you are? You don't even know why you need to know the things you don't know yet.

We're an ecological disaster." "Exactly," said the expendable.

I know you know, and you know that I know that you know. It spirals on from there, so let's just assume the dot dot dot.

Rigg," said Father, "you're so smart and so dumb at the same time that it almost takes my breath awway

So that's it?" asked the expendable. "Final decision," said Ram. "And it's the right one." "Why do you think so?" "Because we live or die, we'll learn something important from jumping into the fold. Thousands of future travelers will either follow us or not. But if we don't make the jump, we'll learn nothing, have no new options." "A lovely speech. It has been sent back to Earth. It will inspire millions." "Shut up," said Ram.

But I am designed to last forever," said the expendable, "if not interfered with." "Isn't that nice? Expendable yet eternal. You'll be able to go back and observe any part of human history that you wish. Watch the pyramids being unbuilt. See the ice ages go and come in reverse. Watch the de-extinction of the dinosaurs as a meteor leaps out of the Gulf of Mexico." "I will have no useful task. I will not be able to help the human race in any way. My existence will have no meaning after you are dead." "Now you know how humans feel all the time.

So this is love, he said to himself, trying to examine his own overwhelming feelings with the rational fragment of his mind. This is the powerful, horrible longing that made Mother marry that miserable tyrant I had to call Father. How many unbelievably stupid heroes in stories did insanely dangerous things because they were in love? More to the pint, how many insane things am I going to do because of it?

I'm just saying that I...I regret that everybody else has nineteen chances, and only I am limited to a single chance for my genes to continue." "Because you believe your genes would confer a great blessing upon the human race." Ram thought about this for a moment, "I suppose that's what every adolescent male believes with his whole heart.

I didn't know that empty rationalization was part of your programming," said Ram. "We would not be fit companions for human beings without it.

Like climbing a cliff, thinking is a perilous activity for those unused to it.

How did I become the one to make this decision for everyone?

People are never fair, even when they try to be...and few are the ones who try.

I hear they whip you for stealing." "Or put you in jail, or sell you into slavery, or kill you, depending on the town and what mood they're in.

Treat a man as if he had a fine reputation to protect, and he will usually endeavor to deserve it.

So our reliance on the computers caused the failure of the mission?" asked the expendable. "The mission didn't fail," said Ram. "It succeeded nineteen times. We're just the exhaust trail.

You guessed it! And you say you aren't creative!" "We did not guess anythiung. We deduced it from the plethora of data you provided us, both consciously and unconsciously." "And yet you couldn't detect the irony in my enthusiasm." "We detected it. As information, however, it was worthless.

If our systems should fail, we would faithfully report the fact. We have no ego-protection that would cause us to deceive you or ourselves. Whereasyou are engaged in ego-protection right now. You thought you would be necessary during the voyage, and you now discover that you were not. This makes you feel bad.

Are you asking us to impregnate all the females on all the ships with your DNA, so that you can be sure of having progeny?" "No!" said Ram in horror. "What a terrible thing for a woman, to wake up pregnant- a violation of trust. It would destroy all nineteen colonies." "Not to mention being embarrassing when all the babies look like you.

Oh, people get used to so many things," said Vadesh, "if only they give them selves a chance.

There's never enough information...That's the great tragedy of human knowledge. No matter how much we think we know, we can never predict the future.

Names come and go. They get attached to you, and then you lose them, and they get attached to someone else.

Besides,” said Rigg-the-killer, “I don’t want to leave the future of the human race on both planets in the tiny little hands of the sentient mice of Odinfold.

It's laugh or cry," said Rigg. "Cry then. Give the old man his due.

Everything was a test. Or a lesson. Or a punishment from which he was supposed to learn a lesson, on which he would be tested later, and punished if he hadn't learned it.

There is nothing that doesn't decay. Some things decay more slowly than others, that's all.

you’re too ignorant to understand the reasons why your ignorance is a fatal disease.

No system works well unless good people do their jobs with integrity, and then almost any system works well enough.

All education is self-education,” said Noxon. “And all self-education builds on the foundation provided by your teachers.

I had no idea we planned to be so ruthless." "It was not publicized or even discussed with the political arm of the colonization program. Ruthlessness was necessary but wins no votes." "But this is not our world, to treat however we want!" "Visiting here as students of an alien evolutionary tradition would not be either cost-effective or, ultimately, successful. We would inevitably contaminate Garden, or worse yet, become contaminated and bring potentially deadly Gardenian life forms back to Earth. The three continental preserves will be sufficient to allow biologists to study alien life at some point in the future. And if you really thought we would colonize this world without making it 'ours', you'd be far too naive to command this expedition." "I...didn't realize..." "You didn't think about it at all," said the expendable. "The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community." "And you aren't morally blind?" "We see the moral ironies very clearly. We simply don't care.

What an unfriendly country,” said Noxon. “Different time, different place,” said Wheaton. “We think we’re a very welcoming country. Generous and kind. Unless we don’t like your language or the way you look.

I’ve had enough adventures,” said Noxon, “to know that boredom is the closest thing to happiness. Boredom means that there’s nothing wrong. You’re not hungry, you’re not in pain. Nobody’s making any demands on you. Your mind is free to think whatever you want. The only thing that makes boredom unpleasant is if you’re impatient for something else to happen.

If you try to look up my skirt, I'll poke needles in your eyes right through your eyelids while you're asleep.' 'I'm looking for help, you give me nightmares, thank you so much.' She was on the top step now, reaching up for a bin marked DRY BEANS. Rigg looked up her skirt, mostly because she told him not to, and saw nothing at all of interest. He could never understand why Nox and other women, too, were always so sure men wanted to see whatever it is they concealed under their clothes.

And when we diverge, it will be impossible for the expendables and the ship's computers on all the ships to know which version of Ram Odin to obey," said Ram. "Therefore I order you and all the other expendables to immediately kill every copy of Ram except me." "I'm so sorry," said the expendable. "One of the versions of Ram Odin did not include the word 'immediately,' and therefore his order was complete a fraction of a second before all the others. He is the real Ram Odin." Ram gave a little half smile. "How ironic. By specifying that you should act at once-" The expendable reached out with both hands, gave Ram's head a twist, and broke his neck. The sentence remained unfinished, but that did not matter, since the person saying it was not the real Ram Odin.

Humans make a machine, and then fool themselves into believing that their own brains are no better than the machines. This allows them to believe that their creation, the computer, is as brilliant as their own minds. But it’s a ridiculous self-deception. Computers aren’t even in the same league.

Father had warned Rigg how the rules changed when you traveled far, and he always warned that the bigger the city, the lower the level of civilization, which had seemed to make no sense to Rigg until now.

down

You get so you kind of like the feeling of being hungry.

Metaphorical flavor doesn’t influence reality,” said the expendable.

there some great wisdom to be gained by calibrating exactly how worthless a mind I have?

much

All history is the same thing over and over...The technology may change, but the behavior is still human. We are who we are. Individuals learn, grow up, get better, wiser, stronger, healthier, kinder—or the opposite. As a group, though, we keep inventing the same behaviors. Some work, some don't.

The whole world always burns...Or it floods. Or some insect eats the crops and you starve...Every baby you have dies eventually, no matter what you do. Yet we have babies and try to go on.

It's better to lose someone you love...than to have no one to lose.

Ain’t spacetime a bitch,” said Ram. “Noted,” said the expendable. “Nineteen times.

When changes come, we start with what we are right then, and then we work to try to become whoever we need to be.

Yes, he was alone, but he needed to be alone; until now, he had not really understood how painful and heavy it was to have the needs of others always in his heart and on his mind.

Oh,” said Wheaton. “Oh, I see. Yes, that does bring mathematics into it.

before,

Expendable Ram says, ‘Good.’” “Expendable Ram can eat poo,” said Rigg. “All expendables can process any organic matter they ingest and extract energy from it.

Don’t ever ask questions that can only be answered one way, no matter what the truthful answer might be.

Stubborn’ just means you don’t want to do something somebody else wants you to do, and ‘annoying’ just means somebody else is frustrated that you won’t obey them.

There are too many players in this game,” said Ram Odin.

When armies benefit from being perceived as necessary, and war provides a means of gaining prestige and leverage over the government,” said Loaf. “Then victory ends a very profitable game. So you play the game of war only fervently enough to keep your military budget high. Nations can get used to a fairly high level of combat attrition without noticing or caring that nobody’s actually trying to win, and nothing but the lives of a few soldiers is at stake.

Umbo grimaced. “It would be just like him.

Now she understood that someone had to end the council by declaring specifically what had been decided and what must happen next. Without absolute clarity, people would go off and dither, especially if they had doubts about the decision.

Shy people might take their doses of companionship like an ill-tasting medicine, but they need it, and they suffer a thousand maladies, physical and mental, if they don’t have it.

That’s how we’re going to face the end of the world? Reading a book?

If you can own property, how are you a slave?” asked Rigg. “Because your owner can move you to one place or another, can break up your marriage, can sell your children to some other owner, can decide how much education you’ll receive, and what work you’ll do, and what hours you’ll keep.

Because Garden cannot survive one-nineteenth slave and eighteen-nineteenths free. A house divided against itself cannot stand!

Life is the soul,” said Loaf. “Living things have souls, have minds, have thought. Living individuals have their own relationship to the planet they dwell on. Their past is dragged along with their world through space and time. But it persists. Long after the organism dies, its path remains, and all that it was can be recovered, every moment it lived through can be seen, can be revisited.

Whatever action you take must be the final action, for you’ll get no second chance to surprise the same man.

A person is what he says and does; that’s how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.

But it could wait until they got back. That was the nice thing about the past—it stayed right where you put it until you needed to pick it up again.

Nobody knows more than can be learned in a single lifetime,

Lack of truthfulness doesn’t weaken a story if you can get enough people to believe the lie.

The whole world always burns,” said Loaf. “Or it floods. Or some insect eats the crop and you starve. Or a disease ravages the wallfold, killing nine out of ten, and the survivors eat the dead. Every baby you have dies eventually, no matter what you do. Yet we have babies and we try to go on.