"Please open your mind to the possibility that I might be an honest man who was himself deceived."

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

React to this quote

More by Orson Scott Card

“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

"Darwin himself told us in his last book that we should never underestimate the power of worms on the move. ...The inversion of a humble worm, especially when disturbed, may bring down empires. Shakesp…"

— Stephen Jay Gould

Science1941–2002

#truth

"A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedæmonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can."

— Plutarch

Philosophy

#truth

"Happy is the man who knows the true from the false, and refuses to accept less."

— Jami

Literature1414–1492

#truth

"They rode on. They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antecedent to them, like blood legatees of an order both imperative and remote. For although each man among them was discret…"

— Cormac McCarthy

Literature1933–2023

#knowledge