"Was it worth it? To lose part of who he had been in order to live free? Perhaps this new self was better than the old."

Orson Scott Card Literature See all quotes by Orson Scott Card →

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“We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts.”

“How is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than clean, painless death?”

“We've seen the worst that men can do, pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don't mean that someday we won't see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can't we?”

“Last night Alvin just got mad, which she said would only guarantee that he’d stay stupid.”

“Once you have the gallows, you’ll find new reasons to hang people from it.”

“It is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any politi…"

— Henry David Thoreau

Literature1817–1862

#freedom

"From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen. I insisted that there was no safety for him or for …"

— Frederick Douglass

Social Activism1818–1895

#freedom

"I would question whether, in the dynamics of capitalism, it is true that it is the distribution of ownership that matters… The man who owned no land was then actually dispossessed. He literally had no…"

— Rose Wilder Lane

Literature1886–1968

#freedom

"We become obsessed with "truth" when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with "freedom" when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal."

— J. L. Austin

Philosophy1911–1960

#freedom