Jack McDevitt Quotes
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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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The notion that we need a higher power, that’s more a human failing than a reflection of reality. The universe pays no attention to what we need. Truth is what it is, and the inconveniences it might cause us don’t change anything.
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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’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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In the larger scale of things, his opinions didn’t count anyhow. The politicians made the decisions, and the voters paid no attention.
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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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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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If you're right, and nobody really cares what’s out there, I wonder whether we’re even worth saving.
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Fiction is unlike reality because it has an end, a conclusion, which allows the characters to stroll happily, or perhaps simply more wisely, out through the climax into the epilogue. But life is a tapestry. It has no satisfactory end. There are simply periods of acceleration and delay, victory and frustration, seasoned with periodic jolts of reality.
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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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Gambini was addicted to asking the sort of ultimate questions about which one could speculate endlessly with no fear of ever arriving at a solution.
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Politicians always seemed to be willing to sacrifice the general welfare to win votes.
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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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He was a decent enough guy, but he was always at his worst when he was trying to be sincere.
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Embrace your life, find what it is that you love, and pursue it with all your soul. For if you do not, when you come to die, you will find that you have not lived.
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Prudence, and experience, suggested she expect the worst.
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Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.
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If you're paying attention to your wardrobe, Rudy believed, your mind isn’t sufficiently occupied.
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'I can’t imagine,' said Dupre, 'a better way to unnerve people than to tell them there’s no cause for alarm.'
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Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.
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New worlds are always hard on old ideas.
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He objected on principle to the powerful.
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'Alyx,' she said, 'you're going to be a legend.''I already am, Captain,' she said.
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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.