“My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.”

“Oh, Val," said Father. "All you have to do is live your life, and everyone around you will be happier.""No greatness, then.""Val," said Mother, "goodness trumps greatness any day.""Not in the history books," said Valentine."Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they?" said Father.”

“I know everything I need to know already," Rigg always said... To which Father always replied,"See how ignorant you are? You don't even know why you need to know the things you don't know yet." "So tell me," said Rigg. "I would but you're too ignorant to understand the reasons why your ignorance is a fatal disease...”

“But I am designed to last forever," said the expendable, "if not interfered with.""Isn't that nice? Expendable yet eternal. You'll be able to go back and observe any part of human history that you wish. Watch the pyramids being unbuilt. See the ice ages go and come in reverse. Watch the de-extinction of the dinosaurs as a meteor leaps out of the Gulf of Mexico.""I will have no useful task. I will not be able to help the human race in any way. My existence will have no meaning after you are dead.""Now you know how humans feel all the time.”

“Government is all show when it isn't murder in the dark ... or soldiers in the open.”

“We're not taking odds on it,” said Ender. “Nothing that actually happens is likely until it exists, and then it's certain. You exist.”

“To reach out to you when I'm in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also to lift you up and carry you above the strong currents of life; and at the same time, I would be glad to stand always like this, at a distance, watching you, the beauty of you.”