...to understand who a person really was, what his or her life really meant, the speaker for the dead would have to explain their self-story–what they meant to do, what they actually did, what they...

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....

we're all trying to decide wether your scores are up there are a miricule or a mistake.a habit

While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.

Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?...Is there some annual get-together where they compare each other's worshippers? Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines...

I'm hurting you to make you a better soldier in every way. To sharpen your wit. To intensify your effort. To keep you off balance, never sure what's going to happen next, so you always have to be...

Everything we do means something, Ender realized. Them laughing. Me not laughing. He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn't think of any jokes, and none of theirs...

For the first time in his life, a teacher was pointing out things that Ender had not already seen for himself. For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.

A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections...

A duel is just two murders who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.

But Father has also taught him: Treat a man as if he had a fine reputation to protect, and he will usually endeavor to deserve it.

Whoop-de-do, said Ram.What?I'm celebrating.Was that irony or loss of mental function? asked the expendable.Was that a rhetorical questions, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in...

Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was a virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was gross insult.

In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest.

it was all your genes that made us geniuses, mom. said peter. we sure didn't get any from dad.i heard that. father said, not looking up from the news that was being displayed on the table while he...

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's...

Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality.