All quotes

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Some men just aren't cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.

There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against…

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. … The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a…

Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.

'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal.'

It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. … Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only…

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. … Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed…

Any dogma, primarily based on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!

To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.