Jack McDevitt Quotes
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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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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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The man was either foolish or fearless. Assuming there was a difference.
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Put the money into schools. Rational ones that train young minds to think, to demand that persons in authority show the evidence for the ideas they push. Do that, and we won’t need to provide a world for the Sacred Brethren who, given the opportunity, would run everyone else off the planet.
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Mac continued to write scathing commentary on assorted hypocrisies in high places and low, without which hypocrisies, he cheerfully conceded, civilized life would be impossible.
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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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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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'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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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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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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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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'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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'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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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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If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.
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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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If you're right, and nobody really cares what’s out there, I wonder whether we’re even worth saving.
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A man without money is a bow without an arrow.
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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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Freedom and idiots make a volatile mix. And the sad truth is that the idiocy quotient in the general population is alarmingly high.
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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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Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.
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Faith is conviction without evidence, and sometimes even in the face of contrary evidence. In some quarters, this quality is perceived as a virtue.
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It is not faith per se that creates the problem; it is conviction, the notion that one cannot be wrong, that opposing views are necessarily invalid and may even be intolerable.