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

Ender understood more than she said. Manipulation of gravity was one thing; deception by the officers was another; but the most important message was this: the adults are the enemy, not the other armies. They do not tell us the truth.

The most evil creatures dont desire the destruction of everythingthey only desire to exploit it for themselves.

The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.

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.

Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head.

If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.