"No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."

"I don't think it has anything to do with truth, Olhado. It's just cause and effect. We never can sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except first cause-knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."

"Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given."

"It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about."

"All dreams. If there was love or pity for him, it was only in his dreams."

"To a man with only a hammer, a screw is a defective nail."

"But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with.The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to embarrass themselves, while the really good ones quietly did all the serious work and bailed out their superiors and got blamed for errors they had advised against until they eventually got out.That was the military."

"The have influence, but no power.""In my experience, influence is power."

"Remember, I'm the only person her who's paid to be nice to you. But not too nice. Give me any lip and I'll break your face. OK?"

"Another oral exam, huh?' Peter said.'Shut up, Peter,' said Valentine.'You should relax and enjoy it,' said Peter. 'It could be worse.''I don't know how.''It could be an anal exam."

"Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, and then happiness as we can manage it.... Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, but your work is first, learning first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing."

"Stories are invented as you go along..."

"Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid."

"Colonel Graff: We won! That's all that matters.Ender Wiggin: No. The way we win matters."

"The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie."

"From you I can learn things that nobody knows."

"Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?" asked Wang-mu."I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes," said Peter."Then let's do it. That's us in spades."

"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration."

"You don't know what would have happened if I hadn't pushed. Nobody knows. I did it the way I did it, and it worked. Above all, it worked."

"What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth."

"[No single] explanation will ever contain the final answer for all time, for all hearers. There is always, ALWAYS more to learn."

"Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power."

"He wasn't telling her what the gods were, he was telling her what goodness was. To want other people to grow. To want other people to have all the good things that you have. And to spare them the bad things if you can. That was goodness."

"It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone."

"Your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing."

"He was not prepared to deal with my mistake, thought Jane, and he did not understand the suffering his response would cause me. He is innocent of wrong -doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on. It was a good decision, and Jane was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn't carry it out. Those few seconds in which parts of her mind came to a halt were not trivial in their effect on her. There was trauma, loss, change; she was not now the same being that she had been before. parts of her had died. Parts of her had become confused, out of order...She discovered, as many a living being had discovered, that rational decisions are far more easily made than carried out."

"You take a step, then another. That's the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it's a remaking of your own mind."

"We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams."

"A good commander, thought Ender, doesn't have to make stupid threats."

"Everyone was always in such a rush to shoot forward that they never took the time to look back. Which was a mistake. If you wanted to avoid snags, kinks, knots, and cuts, you had to "keep your mind on your line," as the saying went."

"Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed."

"Oh, people get used to so many things," said Vadesh, "if only they give them selves a chance."

"I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire."

"I've had enough adventures," said Noxon, "to know that boredom is the closest thing to happiness. Boredom means that there's nothing wrong. You're not hungry, you're not in pain. Nobody's making any demands on you. Your mind is free to think whatever you want. The only thing that makes boredom unpleasant is if you're impatient for something else to happen."

"The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally."

"There are miracles even reactivity can't pull off, Ender."

"He splashed into the water, his whole body, not with the reverent attitude of prayer, but with a desperate thirst; he buried his head under the water and drank deep, with his cheek against the cold stone of the riverbed, the water tumbling over his back, his calves. He drank and drank, lifted his head and shoulders above the water to gasp in the evening air, and then collapsed into the water again, to drink as greedily as before.It was a kind of prayer, though, he realized as he emerged, freezing cold as the water evaporated from his skin in the breeze of the dark morning.I am with you, he said to the Oversoul. I'll do whatever you ask, because I long for you to accomplish your purpose here."

"With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe."

"The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven."

"It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness."

"Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?"

"Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space."

"You're bigger than I remember," she said stupidly."You too," he said. "I also remember that you were beautiful.""Memory does play tricks on us.""No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore. Come on. Let's go out into the lake."

"Guils is the greatest weapon vecause its cuts rarely heal and it aims for the heart."

"He was cold and tired, but he ignored the cold. Around him stars shone. Some bright, some dim, the most constant things in life. Segundo smiled up at them, happy at least to be dying among friends."

"Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down."

"Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing."

"While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights."

"Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. "Never mock a tender heart," he said."

"But shouldn't they still act like children? They aren't normal. They act like--history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus."