Jack McDevitt Quotes
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The beginning of wisdom is to admit to being inept. We’re all a bit slow. We have our moments, but in the end, we have to resort to bumbling through. It is what makes conviction so egregious.
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If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.
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The stars are silent.Voyager among dark harbors, I listen, but the midnight wind carries only the sound of trees and water lapping against the gunwale and the solitary cry of the night swallow.There is no dawn. No searing sun rises in east or west. The rocks over Calumal do not silver, and the great round world slides through the void.
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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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Truth is slippery, not because it is difficult to grasp, but because we prefer our preconceptions, our beliefs, our myths.
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What would happen is that people like Geroge and Alyx would grow old and die chasing a dream. Although there were probably worse things to do with one’s life.
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An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line.
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When do we reach a point where people become responsible for their own actions?
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(He was) tall and lean, an aristocrat by inclination, born into money and influence and never recovered.
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Tides are like politics. They come and go with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarely good news.
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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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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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Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.
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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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(He remarked) that anyone who truly wished to develop tolerance toward other human beings should start by casting aside any and all religious affiliation. When challenged by one of the other guests, he had asked innocently whether anyone could name a single person put to death or driven from his home by an atheist over theological matters.
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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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A man without money is a bow without an arrow.
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The earliest religious feeling MacAllister could recall was being annoyed at Adam, because it was his fault that girls subsequently had to wear clothes.
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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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Yes, it was not journalism’s finest hour. But, MacAllister often argued, it never had been.
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The Reverend Pullman sat on the opposite side of the bench, wearing clerical garb and one of those unctuous smiles that proclaims a monopoly on truth.
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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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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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It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.