Shadow of the Hegemon Quotes

“Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never know why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even know themselves. Nobody understands anybody.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“I'll have that someday, thought Peter. Someone who'll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things turn out.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said - to the consternation of her family - What kind of idiot was Eve, to believe a snake? But now she understood, for she had heard the voice of the snake and had watched as a wise and powerful man had fallen under its spell.
Eat the fruit and you can have the desires of your heart. It's not evil, it's noble and good. You'll be praised for it.
And it's delicious.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“America's intellectual community has never been very bright. Or honest. They're all sheep, following whatever the intellectual fashion of the decade happens to be. Demanding that everyone follow their dicta in lockstep. Everyone has to be open-minded and tolerant of the things they believe, but God forbid they should ever concede, even for a moment, that someone who disagrees with them might have some fingerhold of truth.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Sometimes, what's right is not peaceful or passive. What matters is that you do not hide from the consequences. You bear what must be borne.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“I don't know of a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines - the ones they believe they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Human beings are just machines, Petra knew that, machines that do what you want them to do, if you only know the levers to pull. And no matter how complex people might seem, if you just cut them off from the network of people who give shape to their personality, the communities that form their identity, they'll be reduced to that set of levers. Doesn't matter how hard they resist, or how well they know they're being manipulated. Eventually, if you take the time, you can play the like a piano, every note right where you expect it.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Our understanding of doctrine is not perfect, and no matter what the popes have said, I don't believe for a moment that God is going to damn for eternity the billions of children he allowed to born and die without baptism. No, I think you're likely to go to hell because, despite all your brilliance, you are still quite amoral. Sometime before you die, I pray most earnestly that you will learn that there are higher laws that transcend mere survival, and higher causes to serve. When you give yourself to such a great cause, my dear boy, then I will not fear your death, because I know that a just God will forgive you for the oversight of not having recognized the truth of Christianity during your lifetime. ”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“That was when Petra spoke up. "This is India, and you know the word. It's satyagraha, and it doesn't mean peaceful or passive resistance at all."
"Not everyone here speaks Hindi," said a Tamil planner.
"But everyone here should know Gandhi," said Petra.
Sayagi agreed with her. "Satyagraha is something else. The willingness to endure great personal suffering in order to do what's right."
"What's the difference, really?"
"Sometimes," said Petra, "what's right is not peaceful or passive. What matters is that you do not hide from the consequences. You bear what must be borne."
"That sounds more like courage than anything else," said the Tamil.
"Courage to do right," said Sayagi. "Courage even when you can't win."
"What happened to 'discretion is the better part of valor'?"
"A quotation from a cowardly character in Shakespeare," someone else pointed out.
"Not contradictory, anyway," said Sayagi. "Completely different circumstances. If there's a chance of victory later through withdrawal now, you keep your forces intact. But personally, as an individual, if you know that the price of doing right is terrible loss or suffering or even death, satyagraha means that you are all the more determined to do right, for fear that fear might make you unrighteous."
"Oh, paradoxes within paradoxes."
But Petra turned it from superficial philosophy to something else entirely. "I am trying," she said, "to achieve satyagraha.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Knowing at the same time that whatever people pretend to be, they become.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Petra shook her head. "I knew you were stupid, because you became a talk-therapy shrink, which is like becoming a minister of a religion in which you get to be God.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“As Ender had once said, most victories came from instantly exploiting your enemy’s stupid mistakes, and not from any particular brilliance in your own plan.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Everyone thinks they do, until they take a child into their heart. Only then do you know what it is to be a hostage to love. To have someone else’s life matter more than your own.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“It was a strange, exhilarating feeling to be with people who didn’t want anything from you except your happiness, who were glad just to have you around.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“I'm talking about the cycle of life. I'm talking about finding some alien creature and deciding to marry her and stay with her forever, no matter whether you even like each other or not a few years down the road. And why will you do this? So you can make babies together, and try to keep them alive and teach them what they need to know so that someday *they'll* have babies, and keep the whole thing going. And you'll never draw a secure breath until you have grandchildren, a double handful of them, because then you know that your line won't die out, your influence will continue. Selfish, isn't it? Only it's not selfish, it's what life is for. It's the only thing that brings happiness, ever, to anyone. All the other things--victories, achievements, honors, causes--they bring only momentary flashes of pleasure. But binding yourself to another person and to the children you make together, that's life. And you can't do it if your life is centered on your ambitions. You'll never be happy. It will never be enough, even if you rule the world." (Theresa Wiggin)”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“He went back inside and lay down on his mat, but not to sleep. He did not close his eyes. He stared at the ceiling and thought about death and life and love and loss. And as he did, he thought he could feel his bones grow.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Bean put his arms around her. Not because he felt any personal need to do it, but because he knew she needed that gesture from him. Living with a family for a year had not given him the full complement of normal human emotional responses, but at least it had made him more aware of what they ought to be. And he did have one normal reaction—he felt a little guilty that he could only fake what Mother needed, instead of having it come from the heart. But such gestures never came from the heart, for Bean. It was a language he had learned too late for it to come naturally to him. He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“History, when told as epic, often has the thrilling grandeur of Dvorak or Smetana, Borodin or Mussorgsky, but historical fiction must also find the intimacies and dissonances of the delicate little piano pieces of Satie and Debussy. For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events. Tchaikowsky can carry me away, but I tire quickly of the large effect, which feels so hollow and false on the second hearing. Of Satie I never tire, for his music is endlessly surprising and yet perfectly satisfying. If I can bring off this novel in Tchaikowsky’s terms, that is well and good; but if I can also give you moments of Satie, I am far happier, for that is the harder and, ultimately, more rewarding task.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Human motivation cannot be documented, at least not with any kind of finality. After all, we rarely understand our own motivations, and so, even when we write down what we honestly believe to be our reasons for making the choices we make, our explanation is likely to be wrong or partly wrong or at least incomplete. So even when a historian or biographer has a wealth of information at hand, in the end he still has to make that uncomfortable leap into the abyss of ignorance before he can declare why a person did the things he did.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“located the headquarters of the Hegemony in a compound just outside the city of Ribeirão Preto in the state of São Paulo. There they would have excellent air connections anywhere in the world, while being surrounded by small towns and agricultural land. They’d be far from any government body. It was a pleasant place to live as they planned and trained to achieve the modest goal of freeing the captive nations while holding the line against any new aggressions.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“What I want is the job where the Hegemon speaks, and wars stop, where the Hegemon can redraw borders and strike down bad laws and break up international cartels and bring all of humanity a chance for a decent life in peace and whatever freedom their culture will allow. And I’m going to get that job, by creating it step by step. Not only that, I’m going to do it with your help, because you want somebody to do that job, and you know, just as surely as I do, that I’m the only one who can do it.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“to withhold publication until it could be an act of power instead of an act of futility. Yes, I was thinking of my prestige, because right now the only power I have is that prestige and the influence it gives me with the governments of the world. It’s a coin that is minted very slowly, and if spent ineffectively, disappears. So yes, I protect that power very carefully, and use it sparingly, so that later, when I need to have it, it will still exist.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“Nothing made him that way,” said Bean. “No matter what terrible things happened in his life, no matter what dreadful hungers rose up from his soul, he chose to act on those desires, he chose to do the things he did. He’s responsible for his own actions, and no one else. Not even those who saved his life.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“vanity, vanity, all is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun. A time to scatter rocks and a time to gather rocks together. Well, as long as God didn’t tell anybody what the rocks were for, I might as well leave the rocks and go get my friend, if I can.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“It’s the aborted missions,” said Bean, “that earn you their trust. When you see that it’s more dangerous than we anticipated, that it requires attrition to get the objective, then show the men you value their lives more than the objective of the moment. Later, when you have no choice but to commit them to grave risk, they’ll know it’s because this time it’s worth dying. They know you won’t spend them like a child, on candy and trash.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon