Page 186 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

ends, the world will collapse into chaos again. The Warsaw Pact was on its way to hegemony before the First Invasion. If they try for it afterward--"
"So even Peter might be a better alternative."
"You've been discovering some of the destroyer in yourself, Ender. Well, so have I. Peter didn't have a monopoly on that, whatever the testers thought. And Peter has some of the builder in him. He isn't kind, but he doesn't break every good thing he sees anymore. Once you realize that power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it, I think that there are worse people who could have it than Peter."
"With that strong a recommendation, I could vote for him myself."
"Sometimes it seems absolutely silly. A fourteen-year-old boy and his kid sister plotting to take over the world." She tried to laugh. It wasn't funny. "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."
"I don't think so." And he stretched out on the raft, as if he could lie on the water forever.
It was true. Whatever they did to Ender in the Battle School, they had spent his ambition. He really did not want to leave the sun-warmed waters of this bowl.
No, she realized. No, he *believes* that he doesn't want to leave here, but there is still too much of Peter in him. Or too much of me. None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing. Or perhaps it's just that none of us could be happy living with no other company than ourself.
So she began to prod again. "What is the one name that everyone in the world knows?"
"Mazer Rackham."
"And what if you win the next war, the way Mazer did?"
"Mazer Rackham was a fluke. A reserve. Nobody believed in him. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time."
"But suppose you do it. Suppose you beat the buggers and your name is known the way Mazer Rackham's name is known."
"Let somebody else be famous. Peter wants to be famous. Let him save the world."