Shadow of the Giant Quotes

“Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“The child is mine and Petra's. It's especially important to us because it's the first we know of that definitely does not have my condition."
"You mean it isn't ugly?”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“You don't want to give God the credit because you don't think he exists. But if you're going to blame him for all the crap, kid, you got to give him credit for what grows from that fertilized soil.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“So the I.F. is spying on Earth."
"Just as a mother spies on her children at play in the yard."
"Good to know you're looking out for us, Mummy.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“What about this? A colony of nothing but Battle School grads. If they bred true, they'd be the smartest military minds in the galaxy.
Then they'd come home and take over Earth.
OK, not that.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human beings—that what they saw and loved they had to have. They could share it with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow their own. What we own is ours. What you own should also be ours. In fact, you own nothing, if we want it. Because you are nothing. We are the real people, you are only posing as people in order to try to deprive us of what God means us to have.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“I don't care how loyal you think you're going to be Dink. It's not in you. You're a brat and you always will be. So admit what a lousy follower you are and go ahead and LEAD.

-Petra”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“the cruelest, narrowest, most evil people will always rise to power because they'll always be the ones most willing to wrap themselves in the crescent flag and murder people in God's name.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“You're not crazy. You're not evil. But you can't stop.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“That's the problem with Peter," said Theresa.
"Only the one?" said Peter.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“But always a giant, long before his body showed it.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow Of The Giant

“The emotion she could deal with best was anger.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“It was an unbroken network of causality leading back to the first human who wasn't a chimp. And farther back, to the coalescing of the planets around the sun. If you wish to call that God, go ahead.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Since I don't have actual authority over anybody, Petra, how can it possibly matter if I'm not legitimately authorized?”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Like Santa Claus. You adults pretend he doesn't exist, but we know that he really does.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“I love you,” she whispered. “Loveyoutoo,” murmured Andrew. Petra was glad that someone had said those words to him so often that the answer came by rote.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Peter immediately felt stupid. His parents had been told that he was rejected because he was too aggressive—dangerously so. And he had wormed that information out of them at a very young age. Ever since then, it had been a burden he carried around inside—the judgment that he was dangerous. Sometimes it had made him bold; more often, it had made him not trust his own judgment, his own moral framework. Am I doing this because it’s right? Am I doing this because it will really be to my benefit? Or only because I’m aggressive and can’t stand to sit back and wait? He had forced himself to be more patient, more subtle than his first impulse. Time after time he had held back. It was because of this that he had used Valentine and now Petra to write the more dangerous, demagogic essays—he didn’t want any kind of textual analysis to point to him as the author. It was why he had held back from any kind of serious arm-twisting with nations that kept playing with him about joining the FPE—he couldn’t afford to have anyone perceive him as coercive. And all this time, that assessment of him was a lie. “I’m not too aggressive.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“That’s what we’re afraid of. That she’s actually come to believe her image. God-blessed and irresistible.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“We’ll keep the word nation, but it will come to mean what state means in America. An administrative unit, but little more.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“is only better than the rest of you if all else is equal. Only it never is. And one of the most important variables in war is the hunger that makes you take ridiculous chances because you intuit that there’s a path to victory and you have to take that path because anything other than winning is inconceivable. Unbearable.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“The Free People of Earth do not conquer. The Muslim portions of Sudan will be respected, and all prisoners will be returned, as soon as we have the pledge of Caliph Alai and of the Sudanese government that they recognize Nubia as a nation and as part of the Free People of Earth. The Sudanese Air Force will be returned to Sudan, along with their air bases. We respect the sovereignty of Sudan and of all nations. But we will never recognize the right of any nation to persecute a stateless minority within their borders. When it is within our power, we will grant such minorities a state within the Constitution of the Free People of Earth and defend their national existence.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“stating the principle that no territory would be added to the FPE by conquest or intimidation.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“This Constitution is a contract among free citizens, not between nations. The old borders will be respected insofar as they make sense, but where they don’t, adjustments will be made. And people who have long been deprived of legally recognized national boundaries and self-government will receive those things within the FPE.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“No nation will be admitted that does not already provide human rights, including a free and universal adult franchise.” Then he dropped the bombshell. “Nor do we require that a nation already be recognized by any existing nation or body of nations, provided it meets our other requirements.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Only on the day you leave will you begin to understand Satyagraha.” “Peaceful noncompliance?” “Willingness to suffer, yourself and in person, for a cause you believe is right. Only when you are willing to embrace Satyagraha will you begin to atone for what you have done to India. Now you should go.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Bees hummed among the flowers of the garden but none came into the house; what business did they have in there, when all they needed was outside?”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant

“Felix is ambitious the way I’m ambitious—he wants to create something that will outlive him. He knows that the best way for Rwanda to be safe and free is for there to be no armies in the world. And the only way for that to happen is to have a world government that will maintain the liberal values he has created in his Rwanda—elections, individual rights, the rule of law, universal education, and no corruption.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant