"Land was what they wanted, as if the mere ownership of dirt could turn a peasant into a squire."

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

"Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it."

— Norman Mailer

Literature1923–2007

#life

"I have a natural tendency toward theatricality and poetic language...I've never really written realism…and I wanted to give it a shot."

— José Rivera (playwright)

Literature1955

#nature

"Since 1997, I think the human rights situation in Hong Kong has been regressing slowly. It could be that in China, the situation has been improving slowly, and when both sides eventually meet, they ca…"

— Szeto Wah

Literature1931–2011

#justice

"Instead of the negative and relative stability of Cold War times, we all need positive stability based on collective interaction, an indifferently correct neighborhood is impossible on our continent. …"

— Sergey Lavrov

Politics1950–1910

#ethics