20 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Violence

Orson Scott Card quotes on violence

14. Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we'll be drinking Bonzo's blood water in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same, his blood and my sweat, washed down in their stupidity or cruelty or whatever it was that made them let it happen.

21. There was no doubt in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill you are always subject to those who can, and nothing no one will ever save you.

22. Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing is the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would rule the earth.

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

154. I no longer tell anyone half of what I know, because if I told the whole truth there would be fear, hatred, brutality, murder, war.

166. How do they manage it, these humans - beginning each time so innocently, yet always sending up with the most blood on their hands?

173. The mob still had anger in it, some of them at least. Yet there were so many who were sick of it all, many who were already ashamed, already discovering in their hearts the terrible acts they had performed tonight, when their souls were given over to the will of the mob.

253. 'Why do people act as if war and murder were unnatural? What's unnatural is to go your whole life without ever raising your hand in violence.' from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

291. He pretended all this time that humans were rational human beings, when we are really the most terrible monsters these poor aliens could ever have conceived of in their nightmares.

292. For we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane. He pretended all this time that humans were rational beings, when we are really the most terrible monsters these poor creatures could ever have conceived of in their nightmares. They had no way of knowing the story of blind Samson, who pulled down the temple on his own head to slay his enemies.

328. Wouldn't it have been better to change humanity so it no longer desired to destroy itself?

329. If I had taken away the desire for violence then humanity would not have been humanity. Not that human beings need to be violent in order to be human, but if you ever lose the will to control, the will to destroy, then it must be because you choose to lose it. My role was not to force you to be gentle and kind; it was to keep you alive while you decided for yourselves what kind of people you wanted to be.

510. To my way of thinking, a duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other

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

529. ...All of a sudden they both felt their arms pretty near wrenched right out of their sockets and then they were dragged around, grabbed by the collars, and smacked together so hard their noses bled and they saw stars.

649. I couldn't bear to go out there and ... Be alive. When I had killed her.

771. Wreaking blood and carnage in the normal European Christian manner?

794. It's a brave man who beats a little child. They'll no doubt write songs about your courage.

908. How would we be different from them, killing those whose actions we don't like? I don't know! Maybe there's a measuring rod somewhere in the universe where men's' acts are judged, and those who kill other men for the sake of power will be judged more harshly than those who kill those power-hungry men for the sake of freedom. But if there's no place in the universe for a man to resist the thieves of freedom and still be called a good man, then I don't think there is any good or evil in the universe, and it all means nothing and it wouldn't make any difference, there comes a time when you have to take lives in order to - listen to me - in order to -

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