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Orson Scott Card Quotes about Children

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Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

Orson Scott Card
Funny, Children, Mistake
Orson Scott Card (2009). “Xenocide: Volume Three of the Ender Quintet”, p.20, Macmillan

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Childhood, Today
Orson Scott Card (2013). “The Ender Quintet”, p.22, Macmillan

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Government, Law
"Orson Scott Card: State job is not to redefine marriage" by Orson Scott Card, www.deseretnews.com. July 24, 2008.

Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings! It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. 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.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Garden, Two
Orson Scott Card (2002). “Ender's Shadow”, p.145, Macmillan

Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Book, Giving

I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.

Orson Scott Card
Boyfriend, Children, Dad

The only people who think children are carefree are the ones who've forgotten their own childhood.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Thinking, People
Orson Scott Card (2003). “Shadow Puppets”, p.111, Macmillan

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Ideas, Care
Orson Scott Card (2010). “Ender's Game”, p.80, Macmillan

Legalizing gay marriage is not about making it possible for gay people to become couples. It's about giving the Left the power to force anti-religious values on our children. Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.

Orson Scott Card
Religious, Children, Couple

There was no name for the disease; his body had gone insane, forgotten the blueprint by which human beings were built. Even now the disease still lives on in his children. Not in our bodies, but in our souls. We exist where normal human children are expected to be; we're even shaped the same. But each of us in our own way has been replaced by an imitation child, shaped out of a twisted, fetid, lipidous goiter that grew out of Father's soul.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Father, Names
Orson Scott Card (2009). “Speaker for the Dead”, p.67, Macmillan

Come in, Bean. Come in Julian Delphiki, longed-for child of good and loving parents. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the Fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Clever, Fate
Orson Scott Card (2013). “The Shadow Quintet”, p.207, Macmillan

Before we are citizens, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Liberty, Citizens

I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Crazy, Book
Orson Scott Card (2013). “Ender's Game Boxed Set: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow”, p.134, Macmillan

It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Home, Heart
Orson Scott Card (2008). “Ender in Exile”, p.403, Macmillan

Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew." "He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six." "Right." "And you're the oldest." "Yes." "That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

Orson Scott Card
Mother, Children, Mistake
Orson Scott Card (2009). “Xenocide: Volume Three of the Ender Quintet”, p.20, Macmillan

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Years, People
Orson Scott Card (2013). “The Ender Quintet”, p.109, Macmillan

The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.

Orson Scott Card
Running, Children, Struggle
Orson Scott Card (2009). “Empire”, p.263, Macmillan

The most noble title any child can have, Demosthenes wrote, is Third.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Titles, Noble
Orson Scott Card (2010). “Ender's Game”, p.104, Macmillan

It's easy to manipulate your children when they're absolutely sure you're stupid.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Stupid, Easy
Orson Scott Card (2013). “The Ender Quintet”, p.1333, Macmillan

For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Commitment, Love Is
Orson Scott Card (2010). “Pathfinder”, p.360, Simon and Schuster

She likes us,” said Umbo. “I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.” “Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.” “They were delicious.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Cutting, Thinking
Orson Scott Card (2010). “Pathfinder”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. … Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Differences, Interesting
Orson Scott Card (2002). “Ender's Shadow”, p.109, Macmillan

I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed -- or forced -- to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Independent, Past

That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no disaster, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third.

Orson Scott Card
Children, Night, Law
Orson Scott Card (2013). “Ender's Game Boxed Set: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow”, p.94, Macmillan

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