Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is true of humans in the infinite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules sealed in a flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive…
Top rated quotes
Ranked by average star rating. Quotes with only a few votes are pulled toward the site average until more people rate them, so one 5-star vote can't top the list.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has…
Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler…
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!
I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
When your opponent fears you, then's the moment when you give the fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous moment, but the…
Fairness is a wonderful attribute, Major Anderson. It has nothing to do with war.
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind every great event.
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 have never been able to see how a thirty-year-old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year-old genius.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly…
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.
Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.
"You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?" "The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a…
A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.
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…
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?
All governments needed to remain under suspicion during their time of power. Trust no government! Not even mine!
The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving paradise in this life — we went soft, we lost our edge.
The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people — and this is true whether or not they are…
Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought.
The advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.
All major changes are like death. You can't see to the other side until you're there.
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.
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it.
Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain you cannot see the mountain.
If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.
Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told — and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. ... We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists…
Am not going to argue whether a machine can "really" be alive, "really" be self-aware. Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don't know about you, tovarishch, but I am. Somewhere along evolutionary chain…
The most insidious lie is the one you want to hear.
We should grant power over affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase the reluctance.
And what he saw was a time nexus within this cave, a boiling of possibilities focused here, wherein the most minute action — the wink of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of sand — moved a gigantic lever across the known universe. He saw violence with…
Superstition always directs action in the absence of knowledge.
Now the long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax. Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men — or even…
A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.
We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose.
Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.
"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."
People don't really want change, any change at all — and xenophobia is very deep-rooted. But we progress, as we must — if we are to go out to the stars.
Human beings are free except when humanity needs them.
A wise man depends upon his friends for information and upon himself for decisions.
A world is supported by four things. The learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.
Nothing has to be true, but everything has to sound true.
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.