"...and it won't hurt a bit." Ender nodded. It was a lie, or course, that it wouldn't hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth. (2)

He was the one who had figured out how to send messages and make them march--even as his secret enemy called him names, the method of delivery praised him. (4)

Anything I say will make it worse. (4)

I have to win this now, and for all time, or I'll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse. (5)

We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little devils alive. (10)

Peter opened the drawer and pulled out the bugger mask. Mother had got upset at him when Peter bought it, but Dad pointed out that the war wouldn't go away just because you hid bugger masks and wouldn't let your kids play with make-believe laser guns. Better to play the war games, and have a better chance of surviving when the buggers came again. (11)

It isn't what he did, it's why. (19)

Conscripts make good cannon fodder, but for officers we need volunteers. (20)

Everything we do means something, Ender realized. Them laughing. Me not laughing. He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn't think of any jokes, and none of their's seemed funny. Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn't find such a place in himself. He was afraid, and fear made him serious. (28)

When the sergeant picked on you, the others liked you better. But when the officer prefers you, the others hate you. (32)

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me--to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then were good tools." (35)

Frightened children are so easy to win. (40)

until that night, when the lights went dim, and in the distance he could hear several boys whimpering softly for their mothers or fathers or dogs. Then he could not help himself. His lips formed Valentine's name. He could hear her voice laughing in the distance, just down the hall. He could see mother passing his door, looking in to be sure he was all right. He could hear Father laughing at the video. It was all so clear, and it would never be that way again. I'll be old when I ever see them again, twelve, at the earliest. Why did I say yes? What was I such a idiot? Going to school would have been nothing. Facing Stilson every day. And Peter. He was stupid, Ender wasn't even afraid of him.
I want to go home he whispered.
But his whisper was the whisper he used when he cried out in pain when Peter tormented him. The sound didn't travel farther tan his own ears, and sometimes not that far.
And his tears could fall unwanted on his sheet, but his sobs were so gentle that they did not shake the bed, so quiet they could not be heard. But the ache was there, thick in his throat and the front of his face, hot in his chest and in his eyes. I want to go home.
Dap came to the door that night and moved quietly among the beds, touching a hand here, a forehead there. Where he went there was more crying, not less. The touch of kindness in this frightening place was enough to push someone over the edge into tears. Not Ender, though. When Dap came, his crying was over, his face was dry. It was the lying face he presented to Mother and Father, when Peter had been cruel to him and he dared not let it show. Thank you for this Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever, I need that now. (44-45)

It you can't do it twice, you can't do it at all.(46)

In every arms, surely, there was at least one worth knowing. (76)

Hot anger was bad. Ender's anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo's was hit, so it used him. (87)

Sometimes soldiers can make decisions that are smarted than the orders they've been given. (95)

The message was clear. Winning is more important than anything. (100)

Listen Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you. (102)

maybe knowing about the craziness means you don't have to fall for it. (110)

Believed, but the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It make Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise. (111)

He is dead she thought bitterly, because we have forgotten him. (123)

He used her to test his ideas, to refine them. In the process, she also refined her own thinking. She found that while she rarely agreed with Peter about what the world ought to be, they rarely disagreed about what the world actually was. (126)

Valentine could persuade other people to her point of view--she could convince them that they wanted what she wanted them to want. Peter, on the other hand, could only make them fear what he wanted them to fear. When he first pointed this out to Val, she resented it. She had wanted to believe she was good at persuading people because she was right, not because she was clever. But no matter how much she told herself she didn't ever want to exploit people the way peter did, she enjoyed knowing that she could, in her way control other people. And not just control what they did. She could control , in a way, what they wanted to do. She was ashamed that she took pleasure in power, and yet found herself using it sometimes............you dream of power Peter, but in my own way I am more powerful than you. (128)

I see myself as knowing how to insert ideas into the public mind, haven't you ever thought a phrase, Val, a clever thing to say, and said it, and then two weeks later or a month later you hear some adult saying it to another adult, both of them strangers? Or you see it on a video or pick it up on the net?
I always figure I heard it before and only thought I was making it up.
You were wrong. There are maybe two or three thousand people in the world as smart as us., little sister. Most of them are making a living somewhere. Teaching, the poor souls, or doing research. Precious few of them are actually in positions of power. (129)

the world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win. (131)

He's manipulating me, she thought, but that doesn't mean he isn't sincere. (132)

there is no combat without movement. (163)

that's the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. You loose friends. (184)

Win first, ask questions later. (192)

as long as you're cheating, I suggest you train the other army to cheat intelligently? (194)

If you ever got an advantage over the enemy, use it. (207)

there was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter night 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 then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you. (212)

I didn't fight with honor. I fought to win. (223)

influence IS power (229)

real respect takes longer than official respect. (230)

you're a Wiggin.
Whatever that means he said
It means that you are going to make a difference in the world. (235)

we play by the rules long enough and it becomes our game. (237)

Every time I've won because I could understand the way my enemy thought. From what they DID. I could tell what they thought I was doing, how they wanted the battle to shape. And I played off that. I'm very good at that. Understanding how other people think.......and it came to this: in the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough ti 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 the very moment I love them---(238)

we aren't just ordinary children, are we. None of us.
Don't you sometimes wish we were?
She tried to imagine herself being like the other girls at school . Tried to imagine life if she didn't feel responsible for the future of the world. "It would be so dull."(240)

but it's so easy, when you never meet people, when you live with metal walls keeping out the cold of space, it's easy to forget why Earth is worth saying. (243)

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 I am your teacher. (263)

I can't win battles if I'm so terrified of losing a ship that I never take any risks. (281)

Fairness wasn't part of the game, that was plain. (292)

I won't let you beat me unfairly--I'll beat you unfairly first. (293)

I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! You didn't want me, you slime, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it! (298)

I'm crazy, but I think I'm okay (303)

nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you. (313)

I'm talking about putting yourself inside someone else and embracing their needs, understanding what they hunger for, and also what will actually be good for them. Understanding them better than they understand themselves. Like a mother who can tell when her child is sleepy even as the child absolutely denies that he's sleepy at all. pg 80

But their childishness amounted to more than that. They hadn't learned to restrain the influence their feelings had on their actions. Wasn't that the definition of adulthood? That you wanted one thing, but did another because you knew what was right and good, and wanted to do the right and good more than you wanted to do what you wanted. The long view, that's what children didn't have. pg 110

when things happen, we invent stories about them. About why they happened. That's all science is, and history--stories about why things happened. they are never, never true--never complete and always at least a little bit wrong, and we know it. But they're true enough to be useful. I doubt our minds could even grasp the whole truth about anything--the nets of causality spread too wide to be held within a single mind. but the stories, the useful lies--we share those and pass them on and when we learn more we improve on them, or when we need different stories for new circumstances, we change them and pretend we always told them that way. pg 132

the deep mind, the mind is older than language--the mind of the same kind as the Hive Queen's mind--humans had one. Language was an overlay, so loud that it usually shouted out all the other thoughts in the human mind.

Whenever I think about thinking, my thoughts become words. It is the language talking at me. But the language came from outside. I think I control it, but it controls me back. Like the Hive Queen in the minds of the drones, language becomes part of the background noise, the air I breathe, gravity; it's just there. Until it's gone. Language acts in the human mind the way the hive queen acts in the minds of the other Formics. It shapes us without our understanding how we're being shaped. When the Hive Queen put a desire into a Formic worker's mind, the worker felt it as her own desire. Just so did the thousand voices of language give shape to ender's thoughts, without his really being aware of how the language was shaping him. Only when the language fell silent and then returned did he become aware of what it was doing when it returned. p 190