7 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Competition

Orson Scott Card quotes on competition

68. Because I won't let them do it to me. I can't belive you haven't seen through all this crap yet, Ender. But I guess you're young. These other armies, they aren't the enemy. It's the teachers, they're the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other. The game is everything. Win, win, win. It amounts to nothing. We kill ourselves, go crazy trying to beat each other, and all the time the old bastards are watching us, studying us, discovering our weak points, deciding whether we're good enough or not. Well, good enough for what? I was six years old when they decided I was right for the program, but nobody ever asked if the program was right for me

279. You ready to command a fleet? I don't know. It depends on whether they want to win. Here's the thing, Bean. Soldiers don't like to lose And that is why losing is a much more powerful teacher than winning.

289. Yet throughout history, great victories had come as much because of the losing army's errors as because of the winner's brilliance in battle.

434. Men seemed to find an obscene amount of pleasure in having the upper hand, in winning

515. The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight

1093. 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 ever 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 shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on, I am your teacher. -Ender's Game

1102. I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration. (from the introduction to the story collection Future on Fire, where he discusses writers he considers to be hacks.)