Ender's Shadow (Shadow, #1)

by Orson Scott Card

“Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it’s actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn.”

Savage

“And listen—your fart has drawn out other farts, from people equally stupid, for they think they are somehow superior to you, and that they could not just as easily have been chosen to be examples of superior intellect.”

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.

“So close to not being a complete fool,” he said. “And yet . . . even if you had been right, it would only have been by accident.

“The only process you’ve mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you’ve mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.”

Now, thought Graff, I have to second-guess all my future decisions, wondering how much my choices are influenced by the fact that this kid really pisses me off.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

You can’t rule out the impossible, because you never know which of your assumptions about what was possible might turn out, in the real universe, to be false.