83 Orson Scott Card Quotes on War

Orson Scott Card quotes on war

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.

17. It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I didn't fight with honor... I fought to win.

23. There is no teacher but the enemy.

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.

27. Forget it, Mazer. I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first.

29. I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will ever tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you when he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on, I am your teacher.

45. It was a kind of magic:; a sacrifice that somehow stilled the dark gods that hunted for his soul.

58. He isn't a killer. He just wins - thoroughly.

61. In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don't exist.

64. It had to be a trick or you couldn't have done it. It's the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like [them], understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he would win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine... But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn't do it. If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood [them] well enough.

66. Whether he likes it or not, [he] cannot remain incognito forever. He has outraged too many wise men and pleased too many fools to hide behind his too-appropriate order to assume leadership of the forces of stupidity he has marshaled, or his enemies will unmask him in order to better understand the disease that has produced such a warped and twisted mind.

81. It was me You were a tool It was me We forgive you

87. You never cease to amaze me, the way you turn people into plasma

93. He is innocent of wrong-doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on. It was a good decision, and [she] was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn't carry it out

98. My, but I miss the days when we never talked to each other for weeks at a time

109. When you really know somebody you can't hate them Or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristao says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes I don't think it has anything to do with truth, it's just cause and effect. We can never sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except the first cause - knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is the final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you know what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

112. You're afraid of the stranger, whether he's utlanning or framling. When you think of killing a man that you know of and value, then it doesn't matter what his shape is. He's varalese then, or worse - djur, the dire beast, that comes in the night with slavering jaws. If you had the only gun in your village, and the beasts that has torn apart one of your people was coming again, would you stop to ask if they also had the right to live, or would you act to save your village, the people that you knew, the people who depended on you?

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

131. He is dangerous, the infidel, the anti-Christ, he walks brazenly into places in my heart that I had kept as holy ground, where no one else was ever permitted to stand.

133. When you strike, your aim will be deadly. These people came for entertainment, but they're your targets; you will pierce them to the hearts.

140. The strangest thing about humans is the way they pair up, males and females. Constantly at war with each other, never content to leave each other alone. They never seem to grasp the idea that males and females are separate species with completely different needs and desires, forced to come together only to reproduce.

157. I just don't what to face her again. Because I love her and I fear her. Because I'm not sure whether I should help her or try to destroy her.

175. If you act as the enemy of life, then life will become your enemy.

178. She's just being a martyr no I'm not I'm being practical. You're being a fool.

179. You don't know that you're right. And you don't know that I'm wrong. It's my life. The hell it is.

186. You're only so sure you're right because they're so sure you're wrong.

201. Us or them.

244. You really can't do it can you? Can't what? Can't bow down and kiss your feet? Can't shut up to save your life.

249. You don't fight with minimum force, you fight with maximum force at endurable cost. You don't just pink your enemy, you don't even bloody him, you destroy his capability to fight back.

278. Nobody was going to wait for you strike. Because here's the thing - we don't give a shit about fairness here. We're soldiers. Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy and outnumber the other bastard every chance they get. Your kind of murder only works among civilians. And you were too cocky, too stupid, too insane to realize that.

280. Please stop reassuring me of how respectful you are whenever you're about to tell me that I'm an idiot.

290. They've never seen us make a move like that. They don't understand that, yes, humans will always act to preserve their own lives - except for the times when they don't. In the bugger's experience, autonomous beings do not sacrifice themselves. Once they understood our autonomy, the seed of their defeat was sown.

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.

350. You are truly a monster. You speak of sacrilege and massacre of innocents, and then you ask me to trust you. I speak of necessity, and ask you to help me keep from being a monster.

363. Don't force the issue, don't force Nafai to humiliate you in front of the others. Instead work with him, and he will gladly let you take as much of the leadership as the oversoul will let him surrender to you. I don't think you've ever realize how Nafai worships you. How he has always wished he could be like you. How he has longed for your love and respect more than that of any other person' 'get out of my house' Very well. I see that you are a person who refuses to revise his view of the world. You can only bear to live in a world where all the bad things that happen to you are someone else's fault, where everyone must have conspired against you to deprive you of what is your due. Unfortunately, that world happens not to be the real world

364. I hate it when you back away from a quarrel like that. I don't like conflict. But you always back off at the exact moment when you're about to tell the other person exactly what she needs to hear.

367. It isn't a question of what you need. It never is. It's a question of what he needs. He needs to feel superior to you.

375. 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

399. He hated you for being yourself, because you were so similar to him, and yet so different. The only way you could have kept him from hating you would have been to die young

415. 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.

435. We're going to have to have a long talk about priorities before long

436. You were such a promising boy. Of all the tragedies this lifelong war between brothers has caused, you are the saddest one of all

450. Humans had to evolve what no other primate had: a sense of identity with a group so powerful that it could swallow up the individual identity, at least to a large degree. Humans couldn't have the deep, self-sacrificing loyalty to more than one or two communities at a time. Thus communities were inevitably in conflict with each other, competing for the loyalty of their members. The tribe had to break down the solidarity of the family; religion had to compete with nation for loyalty. But once a community had that loyalty, the most ardent members would gladly die for it. Not for the other individuals directly, but for the interests of the group as a whole, because in the human mind, that group was the self, and the individual was able to regard himself as merely one iteration of the pattern of the whole

457. You smile. Why, because you succeeded in provoking me?

495. Hatred and anger aren't rational

507. Hiding from your enemy is the same as letting him win

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

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.

530. You're lucky I took me a vow of nonviolence,' said mike fink, 'Or you'd be suffering some pain right now.

541. In Vanya's family, silence had never meant surrender, only tactical retreat

549. This is why so many knights have died. This is why troy fell, for a woman like this

556. Why are you raising your voice to me, if not to command?

563. The embarrassment on all their faces. How inconvenient of her, to lay it on the line like this. To demand they face up to whatever was obvious to all of them. Oh, is this making you uncomfortable? You poor dears

572. Gloating is a great joy, isn't it? To have your enemy in your power - there's nothing sweeter is there?

603. He will know someday who is little, and who is great. Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a little queen. And your mercy will be your undoing. You will regret leaving me alive, and someday you will remember possessing me, and yearn to possess me again

605. He had been a shark trying to gnaw away at the shore, sharp-toothed and dangerous, yet unworthy of his adversary

612. Not that she meant to free you. Never that. But it still ought to flatter you. You're the sort of enemy your enemy must love

639. That's right, hide from me, that's mature of you. Don't face up to anything. Isn't that what your life in this house is all about? Hiding!

641. I'm not your daughter! I'm not your sister! I'm not your anything!

647. There would be no compromise, no sweet-talking, no tears that could soften the hardest heart. It's not my heart that's hard, anyway. It's hers. Having no concern for what she's doing to me, the risks she's making me take against my will. My whole future down the toilet

689. I didn't wish [her] dead, actually. I just wished her gone.

695. I'm hungry and thirsty No, I'm hungry and thirsty No, me. I said it first No, me did they really think that only one of them would be permitted to eat?

706. You took sides!' So did you. The difference is that I sided with a man who was asking nothing more than to live with dignity... And you were siding with a woman who was using her connection with me as a way of raising herself above other people, which is foolish and self-destructive and I kept waiting for you to say something, for you to do anything to get [her] under control and you never did, not even when [he] was walking out on her because he couldn't take her psychotic hunger for control any longer

745. She had the sort of beauty that started wars

765. When we intended to enjoy being cruel, we must transform our victim into either a beast or a god

782. Tagiri fears the moral ambiguity in something that she knows she must do. She cannot live with not doing it, and yet fears she cannot live with doing it, either. So conceals it from herself in order to proceed with what she must do

784. I'd be afraid to be your enemy. But I'd be even more afraid to be your friend in battle. You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you, and your friend will die

785. Cristoforo smiled, held out his arms, and embraced the lying bastard

822. Why are you at war with yourself? I want things that I do not want to want. Please leave me But why shouldn't you have what you want?

834. Tuthmose heard this in silence. Because the idea comforted him? Or because he hated hearing from her, once again, that he was wrong?

861. That was as childish as I've ever seen you act Shut up Envy is so ugly, especially when it's so nakedly expressed While your envy is all dressed up as loyalty. But some of us can see through the costume

890. There was no distinction between the innocent and the guilty, between those whose deaths achieved no purpose and those who had to die if mankind on treason was to mean anything

984. You're not as smart as you think you are You're not smart enough to judge

1031. For the first time Lared did not fear her and did not hate her, for the first time he understood what lay behind her choice, and though he thought that it was wrong, he realized it was not justice's fault

1046. There are worse reasons to die...than to die because you cannot bear to kill. (Speaker for the Dead)

1050. Good people can't out-think evil, cause evil thinks of things good folks can't think of. -Homebody

1053. When you really know somebody, you can't hate them...or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them.

1092. You can't defeat a powerful enemy unless you understand him completely, and you can't understand him unless you know the desires of his heart, and you can't know the desires of his heart until you truly love him.

1093. I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will ever tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on, I am your teacher. -Ender's Game

1094. War triggers human inventiveness at the most brilliant, because if you don't win your wars, your civilization disappears -Empire

1095. The great irony of war is this: While war is the ultimate expression of mistrust, it cannot be waged without absolute trust. A soldier trusts his comrades to stand beside him and his commander to lead him wisely, so that he will not be led to a meaningless death. And the commander trusts his subordinates and soldiers to act with wisdom and courage in order to compensate for his own ignorance, stupidity, incompetence, and fear, which all commanders possess in ample measure. -Empire

1096. There are hard wars and easy wars. It's easy to conquer a country whose people hate their own government more than they hate the invaders. It's hard to fight a war when your army knows that back home, their families are rooting for the other side. -Empire

1116. Ender's Shadow