⛩️Orson Scott Card - Collected Quotes

"The computer is also not famous for having mercy." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender’s Game", 1985)

"Coincidence is just the word we use when we have not yet discovered the cause." (Orson Scott Card, "The Call Of Earth", 1992)

"Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey." (Orson Scott Card, "How Software Companies Die", Windows Sources: The Magazine for Windows Experts, 1995)

"Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won." (Orson Scott Card, "How Software Companies Die", Windows Sources: The Magazine for Windows Experts, 1995)

"The environment that nuture's creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa." (Orson Scott Card, "How Software Companies Die", Windows Sources: The Magazine for Windows Experts, 1995)

"We don’t use the word ‘intelligence’ with software. We regard that as a naive idea. We say that it’s ‘complex.’ Which means that we don’t always understand what it’s doing." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Shadow", 1999)

"Leading is a strange thing […]. People see it happening, but they don’t have a clue how it works. […] They don’t see what a leader does, they just see how everybody respects a good leader, and they want to have the attention and respect without understanding what you actually have to do to earn it." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender in Exile", 2008)

"Some people are born to lead [...].They just think that way, whether they want to lead or not. While others are born craving authority, but they have no ability to lead." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender in Exile", 2008)

"The real training ground for leadership is in the game." (Orson Scott Card, "First Meetings in Ender's Universe", 2002)

"The leader only has as much power as his followers give him." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender in Exile", 2008)

"We arrive at an extremely high level of technology - but with nothing under it to hold it up. If we crash, we crash all the way down." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender in Exile", 2008)

"You can’t lead people you don’t know or at least understand." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender in Exile", 2008)

"Computers were a kind of magery in themselves, or might as well be - to people who didn't understand them, they were every bit as inscrutable." (Orson Scott Card, The Lost Gate", 2010)

"Humans make a machine, and then fool themselves into believing that their own brains are no better than the machines. This allows them to believe that their creation, the computer, is as brilliant as their own minds. But it’s a ridiculous self-deception. Computers aren’t even in the same league." (Orson Scott Card, "Ruins", 2013)