36 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Control

Orson Scott Card quotes on control

6. The priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppeteer. If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make. God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal -- there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.

15. Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you.

26. Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad.

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

80. How could he not know that children had minds of their own, and resisted taming?

100. You don't seem to understand that you don't have the right to put blinders on other people's eyes

169. You don't love him, 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 too... You'll always feel betrayed. And because everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat... You're the one who uses our love for you to try to control us.

218. I know something of how he feels. I know something of having to submerge your will in someone else's. To live for them, as if they were the star of the story of your life, and you merely a supporting player. I have been a slave. But at least in all that time I knew my own heart. I knew what I truly thought even as I did what they wanted, whatever it took to get what I wanted from them.

219. What does it matter, to tell yourself that the thing controlling you comes from outside, if in fact you only experience it inside your own heart? Where can you run from it? How can you hide?

222. You'd think she'd learn something from that. But she still does the same thing. Making decisions that deform other people's lives, without consulting them, without ever conceiving that perhaps they don't want her to save them from whatever supposed misery she's saving them from.

252. Would I tame this great being and make her so much my slave that every moment of her time belongs to me? Would I focus her eyes so they can see nothing but my face? I should rejoice that I am part of her, instead of resenting I'm not more of her.

264. The only thing a commander ever truly controls is his own army - training, morale, trust, initiative, command and, to a lesser degree, supply, placement, movement, loyalty, and courage in battle. The commander must be able to change his plans abruptly when obstacles or opportunities appear. If his army isn't ready and willing to respond to his will, his cleverness comes to nothing

266. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life

315. Petra,' said Rackham, 'don't you understand that we love you children? All of you? We already had to send Ender away. We're sending them all away, except for you. Because we love you. Because we don't want any harm to you.

331. It all spoke of the willingness of people to hurt each other, the burning passion to control what other people thought and did. So many people, in secret, subtle ways, acted to destroy people - and not just their enemies, either, but also their friends. Destroying them for the pleasure of knowing that they had the power to cause pain. And so few who devoted their lived to building other peoples strength and confidence. So few who were true teachers, genuine mates.

345. How does he do it? How does he master people without bluster or bullying? How does he make people fear him or love him, not in spite of his ruthlessness but because of it?

373. Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do

400. Just because you live every waking moment with dreams of controlling other people doesn't mean the rest of us do

458. You're the teacher, you're the master, you know everything, I am your puppet

462. If you don't want to control what I think, why did you raise your voice? Why did you argue with me at all?

470. Don't be too anxious to control other people's ideas

501. So if the evil he had done wasn't the death of the roaches, what was it? The power he had? His knack for making things go just where he wanted, making them break just in the right place, understanding how things ought to be and helping them get that way?

537. Alvin wondered if it was true - if all men had evil in their hearts, and those men as were good, maybe they were simply the ones who controlled theirselves so well they could act contrary to their heart's desire. But if that were so, then no man was good, not one

574. Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free

627. Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?

699. This is a really terrible dream, and I really ought to wake up and end it. And so I did

703. As long as my body did their bidding, what did it matter what I thought?

726. What an ugly world you choose to live in Not neat and pretty like yours, not bound about by rules the way yours is. Laws and principals, theories and hypotheses, may they cover your eyes and keep you happy

820. She thinks it's all better now, Josif thought bitterly. She thinks she's kept me. She would have kept me better if she had let me go now.

825. I was sad to see you go Anywhere. To anyone. I was yours, is that it? I had to love you most, is that it? If I thought of the songhouse as home, you couldn't bear that, could you? If I love the songhouse more than I loved this palace, then you'd take away the songhouse from me, wouldn't you? Only you had to twist it, so I'd hate them in the process, and not you at all. You couldn't have me hate you. I wanted your songs You wanted my songs more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.

899. For all the planning and plotting that I did before I acted, I know that I was shaped more by circumstance that by my own will I wonder sometimes if I'm not, after all, a piece in some other players game, following blindly his grand designs without ever knowing that my path along the board is only a feint, while the important matters are played out elsewhere by other men

911. I thought that when I trusted you, that meant you would always act the way I wanted you to.

999. Justice hates it when I make people obey me out of fear. She thinks it's ugly and not nice. She always used to make people obey her by changing what they wanted, so it didn't occur to them to disobey. I think that's degrading and turns people into animals

1000. Who were they to play god with his life? They had been playing god with his life from the beginning

1037. Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you. (Ender's Game) Valentine to Ender

1044. Isn't that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want? -Ender's Shadow