Heartfire Quotes

“My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“Do not shout at me, Mr. Quill," said John [Adams]. "Justice may be blind, but she is not deaf.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“Are you all right, Sir?" asked Hezekiah.
"Just fighting over old battles in my mind," said John. "It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays."
Hezekiah laughed, but there was affection in it. "I would love nothing better than to visit there. But I'm afraid I'd be tempted to loot the place, and carry it all away with me.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“when a government pretends that it is the highest judge of its own actions, the result is not freedom as Jefferson says, but chaos and oppression.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“Mark my words, when a government pretends that it is the highest judge of its own actions, the result is not freedom as Jefferson says, but chaos and oppression. When he shuts religion out of government, when men of faith are not listened to, then all that remains is venality, posturing, and ambition.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“If they cannot forgive me my foibles, then they are not such good people, no?"...

"But they do forgive your foibles. They would welcome your company, too. But if you joined them, you would not understand what they were talking about. You would not have had the experiences that bind them together. You would be an outsider, not because of any act of theirs, but because you have not passed along the road that teaches you to be one of them. You will feel like an exile from the beautiful garden, but it will be you who exiled yourself. And yet you will blame them, and call them judgmental and unforgiving, even as it is your own pain and bitter memory that condemns you, your own ignorance of virtue that makes you a stranger in the land that should have been your home.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“We pray for a messenger from God—who knows but what the messenger also prayed for a place to take his message?”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“[H]is 'philosophy' seemed to consist of anything that would be particularly annoying to the powers that be without being so shocking that they would fire him. He got the reputation among the students as an original and a rebel without having to pay the penalty for actually being either.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“Verily joined in. “My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn’t you.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire

“Being angry isn’t always for a reason that makes sense.”
― Orson Scott Card, Heartfire