Human beings are free except when humanity needs them.

The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals.

Peace. That's what salaam means. Peace unto you." The words brought forth an echo from Ender's memory. His mother's voice reading to him softly, when he was very young. ... The kiss, the word, the peace were with him still. I am only what I remember, and Alai is my friend in a memory so intense that they can't tear him out. Like Valentine, the strongest memory of all.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when the media are almost a monoculture.

He’d undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can’t call back the futures that your bad decisions lost

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it. Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.

I am especially grateful, however, to have known the fifties, before we began to poison our own civilization - or at least before the effects of the poison began to be felt.