Ender's Shadow (Shadow, #1)

by Orson Scott Card

God did not want his servants to sit around waiting for God to work miracles to save them. He wanted his servants to labor as best they could to bring about righteousness.

Bean silently disagreed. The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them—noticing them—that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn’t help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for “feel.” Not that Bean didn’t have feelings. He simply refused to think about them or dwell on them or let them influence his decisions, when anything important was at stake.

I’m not stupid!” In Bean’s experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.

genetic limitations on human intelligence.”

Two trees—knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.”

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 really good 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.

“Are you sure you’re not just picking the kind of commander you’d want to serve under?” “That’s precisely what I’m doing,” said Graff. “Can you think of a better standard?”

instead of the normal organization—four toons of ten soldiers each—he had created five toons of eight, and then made them practice a lot in half-toons of four men each, one commanded by the toon leader, the other by the second.

The trouble was, innovation never resulted in victory over the long term. It was too easy for the enemy to imitate and improve on your innovations.

“Do you know why Satan is so angry all the time? Because whenever he works a particularly clever bit of mischief, God uses it to serve his own righteous purposes.” “So God uses wicked people as his tools.” “God gives us the freedom to do great evil, if we choose. Then he uses his own freedom to create goodness out of that evil, for that is what he chooses.” “So in the long run, God always wins.” “Yes.” “In the short run, though, it can be uncomfortable.”

As Napoleon said, the only thing a commander ever truly controls is his own army—training, morale, trust, initiative, command and, to a lesser degree, supply, placement, movement, loyalty, and courage in battle. What the enemy will do and what chance will bring, those defy all planning. The commander must be able to change his plans abruptly when obstacles or opportunities appear. If his army isn’t ready and willing to respond to his will, his cleverness comes to nothing.

we don’t give a shit about fairness here. We’re soldiers. Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy and outnumber

don’t like to rule things out just because they’re impossible.”

Ender Series Ender Wiggin: The finest general the world could hope to find or breed. Ender’s Game Ender in Exile Speaker for the Dead Xenocide

Ender’s Shadow Series Parallel storylines to Ender’s Game from Bean: Ender’s right hand, his strategist, and his friend. Ender’s Shadow Shadow of the Hegemon Shadow Puppets