Ender's Game quotes

But this isn't how it feels to be a bugger, thought Ender. They don't ware this face like a mask, it is their face. On their home worlds, do the buggers put on human masks, and play?

The enemy's door is down.

We train our commanders the way we do because that's what it takes — they have to think in certain ways, they can't be distracted by a lot of things, so we isolate them. You. Keep you separate. And it works. But it's so easy, when you never meet people, when…

Fairness is a wonderful attribute, Major Anderson. It has nothing to do with war.

He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn't think of any jokes, and none of theirs seemed funny. Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn't find such a place in himself. He was afraid and fear made him serious.

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them.

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

He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant.

Everyone thinks Hitler got to power because of his armies, because they were willing to kill, and that's partly true, because in the real world power is always build on the threat of death and dishonor. But mostly he got to power on words, on the right words…

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.

As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do that is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

I'm doing it again, thought Ender. I'm hurting people again, just to save myself. Why don't they leave me alone, so I don't have to hurt them?

It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I didn't fight with honor... I fought to win.

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

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.

"I'll lie to him." "And if that doesn't work?" "Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that, in emergencies. We can't plan for everything, you know."

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

I've been through a lot of fights in my life, sometimes games, sometimes — not games. Every time, I've won because I could understand the way my enemy thought. From what they did. I could tell what they thought I was doing, how they wanted the battle to take…

Perhaps it's called the end of the world because it's the end of the games, because I can go to one of the villages and become one of the little boys working and playing there, with nothing to kill and nothing to kill me, just living there. As he thought of…

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…

Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you.

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.

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

So he believed. Believed, but 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 [him] listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It…

It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn't hurt a bit. But since adults always said that 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.

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.

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 the hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upward from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the…

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

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.

You've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. We're not... I've got a pretty good idea of what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and it doesn't matter. Children aren't in armies, they aren't…

If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make sure we're the ones alive at the end. Our genes won't let us decide any other way. Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a…