Orson Scott Card Quotes

Whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . . . perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.

I'm a realist all the way. I'm too cynical to be an optimist. But I've lived too much of a charmed life so far to ever be a pessimist.

I just have a different impression of the human race. I think we're really resilient. I think there are a lot of cynical people out there right now, and probably for good reason. But I think that ever cynic is really a damaged romantic, and they really, really, really want things to be good. And if that's the case, I don't need to tell a story that says, "Humanity, look what you've done. Now you can't go out. There's no sun. Look how you've wrecked the world." That's not me. That's not my job.

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

We suppose mankind more honest than they are.

One cannot afford to be a realist.

Hope is the only good thing that disillusion respects.

Always plan for the worst, child; that way, all your surprises will be pleasant ones.

In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as one hoped nor as badly as one feared.

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

I conduct my life with an expectation that people will do the right thing. Yet even with all my experience, I am still surprised when they do not.

I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.

I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist... or maybe even a pessimist.

I would say that I am a jaded man beyond most expectations, but, like everyone else, I still have hope.

I'm not going to pre-empt anything regarding how my career's going to go because I'm always prepared for the worst.

I don't have any expectations.

I always see the absurdity in most situations. It's my experience of how life works.

I'm one of these people who tries to look for the good in people, but I've learnt that, actually, no, some people fundamentally just are not nice.

I've learned never to expect people to be better than they are, but to always have faith that they can be more.

I believe that, by and large, people are good and everybody you meet is more likely to surprise you in a positive way than in a negative way.

I'm very realistic in my outlook on everything in life. When I look ahead in my mind to see what's going to happen next, I see the good and I see the bad.

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.

You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy.

No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, or knows it so thoroughly, or is so utterly disgusted with it, that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it.

I can't think of anyone who is up on evolutionary psychology and related areas who is deluded enough to be called a utopian.