Xenocide (Ender's Saga #3)

by Orson Scott Card

<Human beings do metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered.>

The only conclusion they reached was that while the future couldn’t be known, it would probably be a good deal better than their worst fears and nowhere near as good as their best hopes. Wasn’t that how the world always worked?

We are using two different meanings of the words truth and belief. You believe that the story is true, because you responded to it from that sense of truth deep within you. But that sense of truth does not respond to a story’s factuality

“Most communities attempting to survive under irresistible pressure from a dominant culture develop a myth that allows them to believe they are somehow a special people.

filled with the largeness of the gods, how can you have compassion for such small concerns

“Any animal is willing to kill the Other,” said Ender. “But the higher beings include more and more living things within their self-story, until at last there is no Other.

How can I tell the good people from the bad, if the bad people all have some way of convincing themselves that they’re trying to do good even though they’re doing something terrible?

I can only judge by what I understand.