Orson Scott Card Quotes on Motivation
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Be the best at whatever you do.
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Why did I come? I didn't come. I went. I wasn't coming here, to meet these people. I was leaving there. Getting away. Only I tricked myself.
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She did not understand all of human nature, but [he] had taught her this: to stop a human being from doing something, you must find a way to make this person stop wanting to do it.
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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.
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Doesn't it occur to you that the very fact that you're asking me this question tells me there's something else for me to figure out, and therefore greatly increases the chance that I will figure it out?
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Besides, you only like the asteroid because it was named Eros and that's as close to sex as you've ever gotten.
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She of all people should have known that it was his desire to be a hero that impelled him now, it was his passion to find out what would happen next, to make the next thing happen. She, if she loved him, should have understood
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Wanting to is the whole lesson; all the rest is practice
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[He] had no illusions - the doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future
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I know what you do... I know why you do it. I can name you more truly than you can name yourself
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Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time
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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.)