Jack McDevitt Quotes
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If you want creative and successful children, resign yourself to jousting with rebels.
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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.
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'Organized mayhem,' Nick commented, 'seems to be the chief preoccupation of intelligent species everywhere.'
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Plato is correct about democracy. It is essentially mob rule. And once the mob gets an idea into its collective head, it’s almost impossible to get it out, or modify it in any way. In an era of mass communication and irresponsible media, it can be a deadly characteristic.
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Well, kids are never much on history. Nor for that matter was anybody else. It had been MacAllister’s experience that most people think anything that happened before they were born didn’t count for a whole lot.
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Somewhere we taught ourselves that our opinions are more significant than the facts. And somehow we get our egos and our opinions and Truth all mixed up in a single package, so that when something does challenge one of the notions to which we subscribe, we react as if it challenges us.
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The only people he knew of who would have leveled material advantage so that no one had any were of course those who had none to start with.
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And because she so desperately wanted it to be true, she knew she could not manage an objective judgment.
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He was usually easygoing, one of those guys with little respect for authority because of a conviction that people in charge tend to do stupid things.
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One could not always put safety up front as the prime goal. Do that, and who would ever achieve anything of note?
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Ah, Lord, if I doubt You, it is perhaps because You hide Yourself so well.
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Cities have a social utility, if only as places to get away from.
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'Sometimes,' he said, 'I think life is just one long series of blown opportunities.'
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Secrecy is a compulsive reflex in this country. It strangles thought, delays scientific progress, and destroys integrity.
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Ev was a careful man, a model of caution. He took pride in not committing to a view until all the facts were in. Which meant, of course, that he was never quite on board. Or in opposition.
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We’re talking about something we all want very much to find. And that automatically makes Ed’s conclusions suspect.
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The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge.
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The queen of virtues is the recognition of one’s own flaws.