Quotes from Shadow of the Giant

“Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“You don't want to give God the credit because you don't think he exists. But if you're going to blame him for all the crap, kid, you got to give him credit for what grows from that fertilized soil.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“The child is mine and Petra's. It's especially important to us because it's the first we know of that definitely does not have my condition."
"You mean it isn't ugly?”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“So the I.F. is spying on Earth."
"Just as a mother spies on her children at play in the yard."
"Good to know you're looking out for us, Mummy.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human beings—that what they saw and loved they had to have. They could share it with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow their own. What we own is ours. What you own should also be ours. In fact, you own nothing, if we want it. Because you are nothing. We are the real people, you are only posing as people in order to try to deprive us of what God means us to have.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“What about this? A colony of nothing but Battle School grads. If they bred true, they'd be the smartest military minds in the galaxy.
Then they'd come home and take over Earth.
OK, not that.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“I don't care how loyal you think you're going to be Dink. It's not in you. You're a brat and you always will be. So admit what a lousy follower you are and go ahead and LEAD.

-Petra”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“the cruelest, narrowest, most evil people will always rise to power because they'll always be the ones most willing to wrap themselves in the crescent flag and murder people in God's name.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“That's the problem with Peter," said Theresa.
"Only the one?" said Peter.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“It was an unbroken network of causality leading back to the first human who wasn't a chimp. And farther back, to the coalescing of the planets around the sun. If you wish to call that God, go ahead.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“You're not crazy. You're not evil. But you can't stop.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“The emotion she could deal with best was anger.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“Like Santa Claus. You adults pretend he doesn't exist, but we know that he really does.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“Since I don't have actual authority over anybody, Petra, how can it possibly matter if I'm not legitimately authorized?”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they’re telling the truth, there’s always something hidden behind their words.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“Pero la naturaleza de los subordinados era usar el poder de manera intrépida, ya que la culpa siempre podía achacarse tanto a los de abajo como a los de arriba.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“—Así que nos convertimos en lo que necesitamos ser.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“Dar explicaciones a tus hombres no mengua el respeto que sienten por ti, sino que demuestra tu respeto por ellos.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“Porque los que llegan a la cima en un imperio son los intrigantes, los asesinos o los señores de la guerra.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

“It’s like communes—people with nothing are always willing to share.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Giant

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Popular quotes

“A servant does what his massa says and goes where his massa sends him and doesn’t quit until the job is done.”
― Lynn Austin, quote from Candle in the Darkness

“. . . What do you wish to be? What would you like to become?”

I did not know, and I told her so, but the question worried me. Should I know?

“There is time,” she said, “but the sooner you know, the sooner you can plan. To have a goal is the important thing, and to work toward it. Then, if you decide you wish to do something different, you will at least have been moving, you will have been going somewhere, you will have been learning.”
― Louis L'Amour, quote from The Lonesome Gods

“The state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood - health care, child care, care of the elderly - to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not the least the survival instinct...They corrode the citizen's sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree.”
― Mark Steyn, quote from America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

“Every Democrat says he wants to be JFK while insisting that he will do more or less what LBJ did. No Democrat would dream of saying he wanted to emulate Lyndon Johnson, because the myth is what matters most.”
― Jonah Goldberg, quote from Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

“There are those who dance the notes, and those who dance the music.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from A Company of Swans

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.