From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing.

All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That's why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.

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 better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.

We were all fated to die, and so it is good that at least we can be sure our deaths today might bring about a good end, might make the world a better place.

I don't freeze up because it isn't my battle. I'm helping. I'm watching. But I'm free. Because it's Ender's game.

Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, Where there's smoke there's fire, when the saying should have been, Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.