- Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 2)
"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."
- Colonel Graff to Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 35)
"Human beings are free except when humanity needs them."
- Colonel Graff to Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 35)
-"Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive."
-"That's a lie."
-"No. It's just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war."
- Colonel Graff and Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 35)
There was no doubt in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been 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.
- Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 212)
"Ender, if you're on one side of the battle, it won't be equal no matter what the conditions are."
- William Bee to Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 219)
He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant.
- Bean ("Ender's Game" pg. 224)
Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.
- Valentine ("Ender's Game" pg. 231)
"We may be young, but we're not powerless. We play by their rules long enough and it becomes our game."
- Valentine ("Ender's Game" pg. 237)
-"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that 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-"
-"You beat them."
- Ender and Valentine ("Ender's Game" pg. 238)
"If not you, then who?"
- Valentine to Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 241)
"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."
- Valentine to Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 241)
"Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won?"
- Mazer Rackham to Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 262)
"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."
- Mazer Rackham to Ender ("Ender's Game" pgs. 262-263)
"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."
- Mazer Rackham to Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 277)
"Remember, the enemy's gate is down."
- Bean ("Ender's Game" pg. 293)
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.
- Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 293)
"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."
- Colonel Graff ("Ender's Game" pg. 307)
"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."
- Valentine to Ender ("Ender's Game" pg. 313)
"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."
- Ender to Valentine
Be the shoe.
- Bean, "Ender's Shadow"