Quotes by Public Speakers - Page 9

There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.
Orson Scott Card
The repentance we are called to is about choosing one audience over another.
Donald Miller
I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
Donald Miller
He was cold and tired, but he ignored the cold. Around him stars shone. Some bright, some dim, the most constant things in life. Segundo smiled up at them, happy at least to be dying among friends.
Orson Scott Card
Silence made space for other people's words, which was important for those who needed to be listened to.
Rachel Simon
Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.
Brené Brown
Anybody who wants to get their way says that Jesus supports their view. But that isn't Jesus' fault.
Donald Miller
For almost a generation, psychologists around the world have been engaged in a spirited debate over a question that most of us would consider to have been settled years ago. The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious answer is yes. Not every hockey player born in January ends up playing at the professional level. Only some do – the innately talented ones. Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger role preparation seems to play.
Malcolm Gladwell
You'd think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn't. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke.
Donald Miller
That's what Ender has to understand. There really is evil in the world, and wickedness, and every brand of stupidity. There's meanness and heartlessness and... I don't even know which of them is me." - Hyrum Graff
Orson Scott Card
Never believe a rumor of my death,' said Peter. 'I have as many lives as a cat. Also as many teeth, as many claws, and the same cheery, cooperative disposition.
Orson Scott Card
Stick to a task, 'til it sticks to you. Beginners are many, finishers are few." -Anonymous, as quoted in Small and Simple Things.
Marjorie Pay Hinckley
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.
Orson Scott Card
Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing _Ender's Game_, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective--the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult's. ... _Ender's Game_ asserts the personhood of children, and those who are used to thinking of children in another way ... are going to find _Ender's Game_ a very unpleasant place to live.
Orson Scott Card
They have influence, but no power." "In my experience, influence is power.
Orson Scott Card
When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.
Donald Miller
I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn— that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you’re a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale. (Introduction to Ender's Game)
Orson Scott Card
My father always said that government is like watching another man piss in your boot. Someone feels better but it certainly isn't you.
Orson Scott Card
She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there'd be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than magnifying differences between people, language might just as easily soften them, minimize them, smooth things over so that people could get along even though they really didn't understand each other. The illusion of comprehension allowed people to think they were more alike than they really were. Maybe language was better.
Orson Scott Card
The devil?” Jason heaved the tick over his shoulder like a collier with his sack. “Satan. The adversary. The enemy of the plan of God. The undoer. The destroyer. Yes. He definitely was.” Jason smiled. “But he meant well.
Orson Scott Card
Whenever a journalist wrote an article about him that was critical in nature... he would invite them to a meal and at first they assumed they were in trouble for being critical of him. But they soon learned after arrival at his house for a meal that he merely wanted to engage with them to get an understanding of they criticism... Madiba didn't attempt to change their minds. He would have an informed opinion after having engaged with them, and even though he occasionally changed an opinion by offering correct information, they never parted feeling hostile.
Zelda la Grange
I'll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I wont be fooled into it. I'll do it because I choose to, not because you tricked me, you sly bastard.
Orson Scott Card
. . . I'm not sure we always respect the mysteries of the locked door and the dangers of the storytelling problem. There are times when we demand an explanation when an explanation really isn't possible, and, as we'll explore in the upcoming chapters of this book, doing so can have serious consequences. 'After the O.J. Simpson verdict, one of the jurors appeared on TV and said with absolute conviction, "Race had absolutely nothing to do with my decision,"' psychologist Joshua Aronson says. 'But how on earth could she know that? What my [and others] research . . . show[s] is that people are ignorant of the things that affect their actions, yet they rarely feel ignorant. We need to accept our ignorance and say "I don't know" more often.
Malcolm Gladwell
...research tells us that we judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing. If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good about my body, I don't go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance. We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived shaming deficiency.
Brené Brown
Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.
Orson Scott Card
There is no such thing as inner peace there is only nervousness and death.
Fran Lebowitz
A leader must take responsibility for all his actions and not blame anyone for his problems. The follower, on the other hand, is always in search of a scapegoat or a miracle worker who can solve his problems. That is why leaders and followers complement each other. A leader is one who is willing to take on responsibility of not only his own failures but also that of his followers.
Awdhesh Singh
Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.
Orson Scott Card
In a way she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always acted out of intelligent self-interest.
Orson Scott Card
As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
Fran Lebowitz
The kid is scary.
Orson Scott Card
And the voice of God was in the whirlwind after all, said Thor
Orson Scott Card
I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.
Orson Scott Card
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
In fact she’s a Baptist, which is almost like being Christian, only louder.
Orson Scott Card
Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true.
Orson Scott Card
Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Brené Brown
The story is one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.
Orson Scott Card
The reason stories have dramatic tension is because LIFE has dramatic tension.
Donald Miller
Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.
Malcolm Gladwell
The purpose of evil is to complement the good. If there is no hatred in this world, there can’t be any love too. While love is a positive emotion, hatred is a negative emotion. Yet the feeling of love can’t exist in a person without invoking hatred. The more you are capable of loving, the more you are capable of hating, since the source of love and hatred is the same – passion. A man without passion can experience neither love nor hatred.
Awdhesh Singh
I taught you everything you know. But I didn't teach you everything I know.
Orson Scott Card
Alai saw the tears but had the grace not to say so. "They're fartheads, Ender, they won't even let you take anything you own." Ender grinned and didn't cry after all. "Think I should strip and go naked?"Alai laughed, too.On impulse Ender hugged him, tight, almost as if he were Valentine. He even thought of Valentine then and wanted to go home. "I don't want to go," he said.Alai hugged him back. "I understand them, Ender. You are the best of us. Maybe they in a hurry to teach you everything.""They don't want to teach me everything," Ender said. "I wanted to learn what it was like to have a friend."Alai nodded soberly. "Always my friend, always the best of my friends," he said. Then he grinned. "Go slice up the buggers.""Yeah," Ender smiled back.Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, "Salaam.
Orson Scott Card
The actions of a leader are always criticised by scholars as well as common men. A scholar has no obligation to produce result, so he is free to rebuke leaders for not sticking to noble means. Common men envy leaders their position and power, thus feeling happy in vilifying them to pull them down to their own levels.
Awdhesh Singh
The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.
Marjorie Pay Hinckley
Leaders are usually a reflection of the people they lead. How can a leader be moral if his people are immoral?
Awdhesh Singh
To be forgiven is to be loved
Brené Brown
Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes outside-in.
Malcolm Gladwell
Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action."(p.115)
Malcolm Gladwell
In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'What is it then?'It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.
Orson Scott Card
There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you.
Orson Scott Card
Human beings remember "firsts"- the first time something happens, or the begining of an experience- and we tend to remember "lasts" as well. So when you are about to make a critical/negative delivery , start your criticism with a positive begining, it will affect the rest of the experience. Start by giving them solid ground to stand by expressing the fact that you value them and they matter. Once they are reassured of their own worth, people will accept your comments far more easily and they'll get less defensive.
Olivia Fox Cabane
Intellectuals are rarely successful as leaders. They are so trapped in their ideals that they cannot venture out in the real world to win and lead.
Awdhesh Singh
I learned that true love turns the other cheek, does not take a wrong into account, loves all people regardless of their indifference or hostility.
Donald Miller
If you dont love somebody, it gets annoying if they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them, you get pleasure from their pleasure nad it makes it easy to serve. I didnt love God because i didnt know God. universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists.
Donald Miller
Where loyalty bound creatures together, they became something larger, something new and whole and inexplicable.
Orson Scott Card
So the whole war is beause we can't talk to each other.
Orson Scott Card
Testers for 7-Up consistently found consumers would report more lemon flavor in their product if they added 15% more yellow coloring TO THE PACKAGE.
Malcolm Gladwell
In Russia you learn patience," said Ivan. "In America you learn action.
Orson Scott Card
There is no question that engagement requires sacrifice, but that's what we signed up for when we decided to become parents.
Brené Brown