Notable Quotes:
“I have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.”
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Ender
"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one."
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Colonel Graff
"...But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."
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Bean
“I won't lie now, either. My job isn't to be friends. My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world. In the whole history of the world. We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself dictator, and died for it. My job is to produce such a creature, and all the men and women he'll need to help him. Nowhere in that does it say that I have to make friends with children. “
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Colonel Graff
“As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire.... Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you."
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Colonel Graff to Ender
“There is no help for me. Whatever I face, now and forever, no one would save me from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter was right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.”
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Ender
“This was supposed to be a game. Not a choice between my own grisly death and an even worse murder. I’m a murderer, even when I play. Peter would be proud of me.”
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Ender
“Perhaps it's called the end of the world because it's the end of the games, because I can go to one of the villages and become one of the little boys working and playing there, with nothing to kill and nothing to kill me, just living there.” As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what "just living" might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.
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Ender/Mind Fantasy Game Narrator
“The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.”
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Bean
(Major Anderson) "I went back through some of the tapes. I can't help it. I like the kid. I think we're going to screw him up."
(Colonel Graff) "Of course we are. It's our job. We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive."
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Anderson and Graff exchange
"Fairness is a wonderful attribute, Major Anderson. It has nothing to do with war."
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Colonel Graff
"You don’t have to eat the entire turd to know that it’s not a crab cake."
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Bean
"With Ender, we have to strike a delicate balance. Isolate him enough that he remains creative--otherwise he'll adopt the systems here and we'll lose him. At the same time, we need to make sure he keeps a strong ability to lead."
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Colonel Graff
"It's the teachers, they're the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other."
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Bean
(Ender) "Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself, too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly"
(Valentine) "No, Ender."
(Ender) "Don't tell me 'No. Ender.' It took me a long time to realize that I did, but believe me, I did. Do. And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then is the very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them-"
(Valentine) "You beat them."
(Ender) "No, you don't understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don't exist."
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Ender and Valentine exchange
"Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth."
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Valentine to Ender
"I am your enemy, the first one you've ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on, I am your teacher."
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Mazer Rackham to Ender
"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."
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Mazer Rackham to Ender
“I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first.”
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Ender
“I didn’t want to kill them all. I didn’t want to kill anybody! I’m not a killer! You didn’t want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!”
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Ender
"In all the world, the name of Ender is one to conjure with. The child-god, the miracle worker, with life and death in his hands. Every petty tyrant-to-be would like to have the boy, to set him in front of an army and watch the world either flock to join or cower in fear."
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Colonel Graff
"Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you."
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Valentine to Ender
"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."
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Ender to Valentine
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