Religion makes them crazy. Not a woman I ever met wasn’t crazy with religion.
The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that other people will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream.
I’m neutral on lying, seeing as how there’s times when the truth just hurts people.
Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn’t quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?
It wasn’t so bad being a slave when your owner was yourself and stood up for you.
I always tell what I believe. Whether it’s true, I’m no more sure than any man.
Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in our lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.
I’ve learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it’s occupied by someone with a good heart.
I don’t know a soul who doesn’t maintain two separate lists of doctrines the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.
Knowing something may be a terrible burden to bear, but it holds no danger to them as aren’t afraid of truth.
We don’t admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.
That is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid.
How short life is for fools.
It is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent.
A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets.
It’s all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they’re never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach.
But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind. Are we absolutely sure that we ought to win this war?
Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart.
Poke gave him life. Ender gave it meaning.
The only teacher that’s worth anything to you is your enemy.