Quote

To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly.

Orson Scott Card

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Orson Scott Card
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: August 24
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Richland
Washington
Brian Green
Frederick Bliss
Byron Walley
Scott Richards
Dinah Kirkham
P.Q. Gump
Byron S. Walley
Human
Surprises
Humans
Wickedness
Way
Surprised
Always
Avoid
Surprise
Expect
Beings
Best
Pleasantly

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For children love is a feeling for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.
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The fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.
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Isn’t that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?
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The only way to learn is by changing your mind.
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Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what? asked Wang-mu. I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes, said Peter. Then let's do it. That's us in spades.
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Bean could see the hunger in their eyes. Not the regular hunger, for food, but the real hunger, the deep hunger, for family, for love, for belonging.
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You understand that the piggies are animals, and you no more condemn them for murdering Libo and Pipo than you condemn a cabra for shewing up capim. That's right, said Miro. Ender smiled. And that's why you'll never learn anything from them. Because you think of them as animals.
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If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.
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We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.
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Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, Where there's smoke there's fire, when the saying should have been, Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.
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Only stupid men trying to seem smart need to be with dumb women. Only weak men trying to look strong are attracted to compliant women.
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Good people do not let others suffer needlessly.
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You can't write a novel all at once, any more than you can swallow a whale in one gulp. You do have to break it up into smaller chunks. But those smaller chunks aren't good old familiar short stories. Novels aren't built out of short stories. They are built out of scenes.
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Well, how do I know that they don't know the answer unless I ask?
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I've learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it's occupied by someone with a good heart.
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Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.
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In order to learn, one must change one's mind.
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It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit.
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Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother?
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I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.
Orson Scott Card