Orson Scott Card Quotes on Judgment
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Ender would be pleased - every one of them was stupid.
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A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultry, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. (There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine, a Speaker for the Dead, has told me of two other rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.) The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him, the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. 'Is there anyone here,' he says to them, 'who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?' They murmer and say, 'We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted on it.' The rabbi says, 'Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, 'Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he'll know I'm his loyal servant.' So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder. Another rabbi, another city. He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, 'Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.' The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I'll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated. As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman's head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones. 'Nor am I without sin,' he says to the people. 'But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it.' So the women died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance. The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.
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In your judgment I have no one else's judgment to use
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I'm not one to despise other people for their sins. I haven't found one yet, that I didn't say to myself, I've done worse than this
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You've done all this thinking, you've seen all the possibilities for the future - good ones and bad ones alike - and yet the only ones you are willing to believe in, the imagined future that you seize upon as the foundation for all your moral judgments, is the only future in which everyone that you and I have ever loved and everything we'd ever hoped for must be obliterated.
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He's not as smart as he thinks he is Yes he is. And if you doubt it, you're not as smart as you think you are.
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The old fear and strangeness remained as an undercurrent, despite all her attempts to reassure herself. Until now, seeing him, she realized she was not afraid of him..... No she was afraid of what he would think of her - an even older and darker fear
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He realized now he simply hated them, even when by chance they were silent. He hated the way they treated women. He hated the way they treated men. He hated the way they thought. He hated the way they didn't think. It was hard to imagine which of them he hated more.
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Hatred and anger aren't rational
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A man always assumes that others are as virtuous as himself
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Am I a liar, or is he mistaken? I am the only fit judge of what is in my heart, I think
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She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as women judge men - not on the strength of their arguments, and not on their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, the strength of their soul, their compassion, and - ah, this above all - their conversation
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Contempt is so easy
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Am I really that stupid looking?
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She's not ignorant, she's just stupider than I ever imagined
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You're not as smart as you think you are You're not smart enough to judge
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You would turn away one who comes teaching the name of god? The wicked can use god's name as well as god How can we ever know, then, unless we try them? Or should we cast away all men who use the name of god, for fear they're blasphemers? What name will god use, then?
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I found out from their memories just what kind of person each was. Some were haters, the sort of people you'd expect to find in any conspiracy to kill. Others were merely afraid, others were dedicated to a cause - but I didn't care that much why they had wanted me dead. I needed to know more the purposes of their lives, what made them choose their choices
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Hypocrites, I said to them. You dare to rob mankind of all it's pain, yet treasure your own agonies. Who watches you?
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'I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. -Ender's Game
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No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.
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... if he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? -Enchantment
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And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves? -Ender's Shadow