13 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Society

Orson Scott Card quotes on society

5. Even if there's no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can't punish him, because he can't help it, because his genes or his environment or god made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can't honor him because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you.

92. Marriage is not a covenant between a man and a woman; even the beasts cleave together and produce their young. Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman on one side and their community on the other

114. Was it something unavoidable, when strangers met, that the meeting had to be marked with blood?

388. Maybe we're like the baboons. When we're stable and civilized, the women decide things, establish the households, the connections between them, create the neighborhoods and the friendships. But when we're nomadic, living lives on the edge of survival, men rule, and brook no interference from the women. Perhaps that's what civilization means - is the dominance of the female over the male/ and wherever that lapses, we call the result uncivilized, barbarian ... Manly.

451. Humans, in order to rise above the animals, had learned how to convert themselves into nothing more than organs or limbs or even disposable fingernails and hair of a larger metaphorical organism

472. Law can change how people behave when others are watching - that's all

491. For 2 people to love each other, they have to meet, don't they? And 2 people who live in utterly different worlds have no chance of meeting

681. In contemporary American culture, going to the psychiatrist means you're crazy. But going to a therapist means you're rich and stylishly uptight. I hate it when you talk about 'contemporary American culture' this and 'contemporary American culture' that.

893. People's beliefs don't exist in isolation. Everyone's firmly held beliefs exert an enormous pressure on everyone else

987. [He] had never been beaten up. He had, however, seen the Rodney king tape.

1026. People aren't individuals, even though we all think we are. Even before I came, what did you know of yourself, except what your family told you? Their tales of your childhood became your vision of yourself; you imitated your father and mother both, learned what it means to be a human being from them. Every pattern of your life has been bent and shaped by what other people do and what other people say

1105. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

1106. It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.