Shadow of the Hegemon
Orson Scott Card
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy.”
“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.”
“It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.”
“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.”
“He would always speak the language of the heart with an awkward foreign accent.”
“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.”
“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 knew why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even knew themselves. Nobody understands anybody. And yet somehow we live together, mostly in peace, and get things done with a high enough success rate that people keep trying. Human beings get married and a lot of marriages work, and they have children and most of them grow up to be decent people, and they have schools and businesses and factories and farms that have results at some level of acceptability—all without having a clue what’s going on inside anybody’s head. Muddling through, that’s what human beings do. that was the part of being human that Bean hated the most.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
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Book Keywords:
understanding-others, humor, death, sister-carlotta, death-and-dying, lies, lockstep, garden-of-eden, adam-and-eve, consequences, understanding-oneself-and-others, aspirations, life, goals, funny-but-sad, julian-delphiki, aspergers, bean, sin, governement, truth, forbidden-fruit, patterns, life-and-living
