Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

Ender didn't like fighting. He didn't like Peter's kind, the strong against the weak, and he didn't like his own kind either, the smart against the stupid.

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

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.

If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.

Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.

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.

Efficiency was just a measurement of how fast money moved from the poor to the rich. We prefer the opposite of efficiency, which is to say, justice.

Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties came prepared to forgive neither party came prepared to be forgiven.

I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension

A man who relentlessly perspires to be excellent evidently inspires many with his intelligence and elegance.

The hatred of truth is the taproot of violence.

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions.

Sometimes people just don't understand the way that I work in politics.

Sam Walton instilled ownership of the products in the stores into the collective consciousness of every associate regardless of what job they did for the company.

When people come up to me and say 'I hate you' or 'I love to hate you,' it's not the usual response that I thought I would've gotten halfway into my career. And then they say, 'I love your work.'