Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.
Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.
Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.
Pequenino: While collectively...
Hive Queen: Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.
Tags: intelligence humanity stupidity discovery buggers pequeninos
If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make... So-- as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of hour behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down, one by one, then you can always say, look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to... Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society.
Orson Scott CardTags: determinism freedom philosophy want dominoes
For the first time in his life, a teacher was pointing out things that Ender had not already seen for himself. For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.
Orson Scott CardTags: admiration teaching admire student teacher teachers-and-learners
Computers were a kind of magery in themselves, or might as well be - to people who didn't understand them, they were every bit as inscrutable.
Orson Scott CardTags: computers
I would have the taste of poison in my mouth all the days of my life, if I went back home and pretended to be what I was before.
Orson Scott CardPerhaps 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.
Orson Scott CardTwo sides of the same coin, but which side is which?
Orson Scott CardI am a disbeliever in the unbelievable.
Orson Scott CardTags: ender-wiggin
My master wishes to see you," said the mounted man.
"When the planting's done," I said.
"Lord Barton is unaccustomed to waiting."
"Then he should rejoice, for he'll learn something new today." I went back to the garden. Soon the servant left.
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