"That's one of those questions, whether human beings are really capable of change, or if all seeming changes are really a matter of framing the existing character in a different moral situation."

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

"Actions may be laudable or blameable; but they cannot be reasonable: Laudable or blameable, therefore, are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable. The merit and demerit of actions frequently con…"

— David Hume

Philosophy1796–1864

#ethics

"There is nothing more frightful to the philosopher than the unconscious tragedies of human reason. Men are somnambulists. Stupefied by the long night of instinct out of which it arose, the human mind …"

— J. Howard Moore

Philosophy1862–1916

#philosophy

"It is difficult for Britons to realise what Verdun means to France. The world can show no battlefield to correspond to it. On those heights Gaul and Teuton had, from the blizzards of February to the s…"

— David Lloyd George

Politics1863–1945

#time

"It might seem at first thought to be of little difference whether the present movement at the South be called "secession" or "rebellion." The movers, however, well understand the difference. At the be…"

— Abraham Lincoln

Politics1744–1786

#time