Jack McDevitt Quotes
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Never confuse perfection with production. People who don’t make mistakes aren’t doing anything.
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Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there’s a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don’t like it very much.
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One SF prediction that I would like very much to see: Get solar collectors launched to beam energy back home, and get away from fossil fuels.
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Maybe the universe doesn’t approve of places like New York.
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I've tried to quit writing several times, but I enjoy it too much.
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During his sixty-odd years, he had found there were as many louts in the patrician classes as there were ignoramuses farther down the social spectrum.
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MacAllister wasn’t always right, but he was smart enough to know that. He was willing to change his mind when the evidence pointed in a different direction. That fact alone put MacAllister very nearly in a class by himself.
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I was once invited to attend a private dinner for Senator John F. Kennedy. But it was a Saturday evening, and I passed. Had better things to do.
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My father used to take me to the movies on Saturdays. In 1940, when I was four years old, we encountered 'Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.' I loved it. Especially the rocket ship, which I later realized had no airlock and no washroom. But they managed to get to Mongo with it.
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See what the world looks like from orbit. Well, in that way, at least, there was profit to be had. Nobody could look down at the planet, green and blue, with no borders in evidence and no sign of human habitation, and not get his perspective forever altered.
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Science fiction writers missed the most salient feature of our modern era: the Internet.
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He would make a good manager, but he had a little too much integrity to survive in a top job.
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How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top?
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When I was teaching English and trying to get kids passionate about reading, the most effective weapon I had was 'The Martian Chronicles.'
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It had occurred to Rimford, at about the time he approached fifty, that the chief drawback in contemplating the enormous gulfs of time and space that constitute the bricks and mortar of the cosmologist is that one acquires a dismaying perception of the handful of years allotted a human being.
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Thanks to the comic book publishers. Batman and Captain Marvel were responsible for my learning to read at least a year before I showed up at school. They got me interested in writing. Started my first novel at about eight. The title: 'The Canals of Mars.'
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So we have progressed to the point where we can move politicians around faster than light. I'm not sure I see the advantage.
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Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.
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At night the sea is very loud,And voices ride the tide.At another time, in another place,Beneath the silent moon,We laughed together.
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The reality is, we don’t want our kids to be smart. We want them to be like us. Only more so.
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The creative act requires both will and intelligence. Breaking things is easy. You only need a hammer.
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Truth is slippery, not because it is difficult to grasp, but because we prefer our preconceptions, our beliefs, our myths.
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'I'm not optimistic,' he said. 'The issue clearly flies in the face of the First Amendment. People have a right to tell kids whatever they want about religion.''Do they have a right to push human sacrifice?''Of course not, Mac. But this isn’t human sacrifice. It’s just a church school.''I'm not sure the effect isn’t similar.'
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The uplifters are forever running around telling blockheads they would do better if they would believe in themselves. But they already do. That is why they are blockheads.