1,174 Quotes by Orson Scott Card

In order to learn, one must change one’s mind.

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.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one’s life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don’t have to seek them out and spend time with them.

He was much more useful as a name and a story than he would ever be as an inconvenient flesh-and-blood person.

As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire...

Folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn’t know about something bad, it wasn’t happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true.

Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors – we hope – of your life come from reading fiction.

We do what we must to earn our place in the community, but we live for the hours at home. For each other, for the children. It will never get me written up in the history books.