Jack McDevitt Quotes
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Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.
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Yes, it was not journalism’s finest hour. But, MacAllister often argued, it never had been.
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The kids were both adolescents, at that happy stage where they could simultaneously make him confident about the future while they were sabotaging the present.
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The idiots always rose to the top and made policy.It explained a lot of things.
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But the old man had provided his kids with one priceless gift: He’d encouraged them to read, and he didn’t bother too much about the content, subscribing to the theory that good books ultimately speak for themselves.
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Defend your opinion only if it can be shown to be true, not because it is your opinion.
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He took particular delight in neutralizing those who desperately needed to be neutralized, those overblown, self-important, arrogant half-wits who were always running about dictating behavior, morals, and theology to everyone else. And he never looked back.
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Throughout our long and sorry history it has been men who supposed themselves to be exemplars of integrity who have done all the damage. Every crusade, whether for decent literary standards or to cover women’s bodies or to free the holy land, had been launched, endorsed, and enthusiastically perpetrated by men of character.
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The Peacekeepers had a tradition that every problem had a solution. It was a nice slogan. Wasn’t true, but it sounded good.
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'Most of my business comes from picking up the pieces when people get things wrong.' She grinned. 'I’ll never lack for work.'
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Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The real guilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while the morons run wild. You can opt out if you want to. Play it safe. But if you do, don’t complain when the roof comes down.
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But, come to think of it, there was no need to wait. Time travelers don’t have to wait for anybody.
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Her experience had taught her that people who insisted on having others recognize their outstanding qualities usually didn’t have any.
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'One should always be skeptical. That’s always been our problem. We have too many believers.''Believers in what?''In everything.'
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If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.
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So long as you believe in some truth you do not believe in yourself. You are a servant. A man of faith.
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Faith has its price. When misfortune strikes the true believer, he assumes he has done something to deserve punishment, but isn’t quite certain what. The realist, recognizing that he lives in a Darwinian universe, is simply grateful to have made it to another sunset.
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A man is entitled to only one great passion in a lifetime. Whether it’s music or a profession or a woman, everything else pales in its afterglow. The searing shock so changes one’s chemistry that if the object is lost, the experience can never be repeated. Only anticlimax remains.
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Politicians always seemed to be willing to sacrifice the general welfare to win votes.
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Of course, they (i. e., demons) had always been observed with some regularity, but that could usually be ascribed to an overabundance of piety or wine or imagination. Take your pick.
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We know that when change comes, no one is more adamant in holding on to the past than those in power. They know change is inevitable, but they would, if they could, parcel it out in measured pieces. Grain for chickens.
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'It’s all PR,' said Hutchins. 'If we ever produced a person who was unrelentingly honest, everybody would want him dead.'
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He’d grown a mustache since Randall had last seen him. It was hard to understand why: He looked devious enough without it.
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Freedom and idiots make a volatile mix. And the sad truth is that the idiocy quotient in the general population is alarmingly high.