But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graph, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and it’s crew just to catch me? I find that quite… flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain.

— Orson Scott Card

But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. Furthermore, you have to fit in with the system. Furthermore, you have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. Furthermore, you have to think in ways that they are comfortable with. The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to embarrass themselves, while the perfect ones quietly did all the serious work and bailed out their superiors and got blamed for errors they had advised against until they eventually got out. That was the military.

— Orson Scott Card

But it was not the boyish grin she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present. It was the smile of wisdom.

— Orson Scott Card

But most of those to whom Under's Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of belonging.

— Orson Scott Card

But my eagerness to sacrifice little children in order to save mankind is wearing thin.

— Orson Scott Card

But shouldn't they still act like children? They aren't normal. They act like--history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus.

— Orson Scott Card

But the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine being true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.

— Orson Scott Card

By deciding that they would study only that which could be verified under controlled conditions, they had merely limited their field of endeavor. Most truth lay outside the neat confines of science....

— Orson Scott Card

Can Carry left, and under mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

— Orson Scott Card

Colonel Graph: We won! That's all that matters. Ender Wiggins: No. The way we win matters.

— Orson Scott Card