Xenocide Quotes

“The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Madness, and then illumination.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“The strangest thing about humans is the way they pair up, males and females. Constantly at war with each other, never content to leave each other alone. They never seem to grasp the idea that males and females are separate species with completely different needs and desires, forced to come together only to reproduce
Of course you feel that way. Your mates are nothing but mindless drones, extensions of yourself, without their own identity.
We know out lovers with perfect understanding. Humans invent an imaginary lover and put that mask over the face of the body in their bed.
That is the tradegy of language, my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong,
This is the source of their misery.
And some of their strength, I think. Your people and mine, each for their own evolutionary reasons, mate with vastly unequal partners. Our mates are always, hopelessly, our intellectual inferiors. Humans mate with beings who challenge their supremcy. They have conflicts between mates, not because their communication is inferior to ours, but because they commune with each other at all.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“I looked for perfection, and I found something better.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“The only teacher that's worth anything to you is your enemy.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“If you asked me to marry you all over again today I'd say yes, said Valentine.

And if I had only met you for the first time today, I'd ask.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Every day people judge all other people. The question is whether they judge wisely.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Humans invent an imaginary lover and put that mask over the face of the body in their bed. That is the tragedy of language my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“If words can be lethal weapons, I must provide them with an arsenal.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Intellectual understanding does not always bring visceral belief.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew."

"He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six."

"Right."

"And you're the oldest."

"Yes."

"That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“I'm not a liar, sir,' she said.
"'No, I'm sure you sincerely become whatever it is you're pretending to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.

Pequenino: While collectively...

Hive Queen: Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.>

Pequenino: So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals-- and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.

Hive Queen: Exactly.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Earthborn animals do this thing, inside their brains—a sort of firing-off of synapses, controlled insanity. While they’re asleep. The part of their brain that records sight or sound, it’s firing off every hour or two while they sleep; even when all the sights and sounds are complete random nonsense, their brains just keep on trying to assemble it into something sensible. They try to make stories out of it. It’s complete random nonsense with no possible correlation to the real world, and yet they turn it into these crazy stories. And then they forget them. All that work, coming up with these stories, and when they wake up they forget almost all of them. But when they do remember, then they try to make stories about those crazy stories, trying to fit them into their real lives.
…They change what their stories mean. They transform things so that the same memory can mean a thousand different things. Even from their dreams, sometimes they make up out of that randomness something that illuminates everything.
…Even if the vast majority of them are wrong, even if ninety-nine of every hundred is stupid and wrong, out of those thousands of ideas that still leaves them with a hundred good ones. That’s how they make up for being so stupid and having such short lives and small memories.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.
Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Where did this whole thing begin? If what we think of as reality is just a pattern that somebody brought Outside, and the universe just popped into bring, then whoever it was is probably still wandering around giving off universes wherever she goes So where did she come from? And what was there before she started doing it? And how did Outside come to exist, for that matter?”
That's Inspace thinking,” said Olhado. “That's the way you conceive of things when you still believe in space and time as absolutes. You think of everything starting and stopping, of things having origins, because that's the way it is in the observable universe. The thing is, Outside there's no rules like that at all. Outside was always there and always will be there. The number of philotes there is infinite, and all of them always existed. No mater how many of them you pull out and put into organized universes, there'll be just as many left as there always were”
But somebody had to start making universes.”
Why?” asked Olhado.
Because-because I-“
Nobody ever started. It's always been going on. I mean, if it weren’t already going on, it couldn’t start. Outside where there weren’t any patterns, it would be impossible to conceive of a pattern. They can’t act, by definition, because they literally can’t even find themselves.”
But how could it have always been going on?”
Think of it as this moment in time, the reality we live in at this moment, this condition of the entire universe-of all the universes-”
You mean now.”
Right. Think of it as if now were the surface of a sphere. Time is moving forward through the chaos of Outside like the surface of an expanding sphere, a balloon inflating. On the outside, chaos. On the inside, reality. Always growing-like you said, Valentine. Popping up new universes all the time.”
But where did this balloon come from?”
OK, you’ve got the balloon. The expanding sphere. Only now think of it as a sphere with an infinite radius.”
Valentine tried to think of what that would mean. “The surface would be completely flat.”
That’s right”
And you could never go all the way around it”
That’s right, too. Infinitely large. Impossible even to count all the universes that exist on the reality side. And now, starting from the edge, you get on a starship and start heading inward toward the center. The farther in you go, the older everything is. All the old universes back and back. When do you get to the first one?”
You don’t” said Valentine. “Not it you’re traveling at a finate rate.”
You don’t reach the center of a sphere on infinite radius, if you’re starting at the surface, because no matter how far you go, no matter how quickly, the center, the beginning, is always infinitely far away.”
And that’s where the universe began.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“I saw what Andrew did in our family. I saw that he came in and listened and watched and understood who we were, each individual one of us. He tried to discover our need and then supply it. He took responsibility for other people and it didn't seem to matter to him how much it cost him. And in the end, while he could never make the Ribeira family normal, he gave us peace and pride and identity. Stability. He married Mother and was kind to her. He loved us all. He was always there when we wanted him, and seemed unhurt by it when we didn't. He was firm with us about expecting civilized behavior, but never indulged his whims at our expense. And I thought: This is so much more important than science. Or politics, either. Or any particular profession or accomplishment or thing you can make. I thought: If I could just make a good family, if I could just learn to be to other children, their whole lives, what Andrew was, coming so late into ours, then that would mean more in the long run, it would be a finer accomplishment than anything I could ever do with my mind or hands."

"So you're a career father," said Valentine.

"Who works at a brick factory to feed and clothe the family. Not a brick-maker who also has kids. Lini also feels the same way... She followed her own road to the same place. 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.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“You don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them to, Mother, you'll always feel betrayed. And because eventually everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat, Mother. You're the one who uses our love for us to try to control us.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“From all wise men, O Lord, protect us.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“Valentine had long ago observed that in a society that expected chastity and fidelity, like Lusitania, the adolescents who controlled and channeled their youthful passions were the ones who grew up to be both strong and civilized. Adolescents in such a community who were either too weak to control themselves or too contemptuous of society's norms to try usually ended up being either sheep or wolves- either mindless members of the herd or predators who took what they could and gave nothing.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide