Jack McDevitt quotes - page 3

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. (Jack McDevitt)
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. View quote
Jack McDevitt
Ah, Lord, if I doubt You, it is perhaps because You hide Yourself so well. View quote
Jack McDevitt
I suspect we would be wise,” he said without looking up, "to avoid declaring what God will or will not allow. View quote
Jack McDevitt
Secrecy is a compulsive reflex in this country. It strangles thought, delays scientific progress, and destroys integrity. View quote
Jack McDevitt
He expected to have only one clear shot at the assorted joys of living, and he had no intention of risking it to meet someone else's misconceived expectations. View quote
Jack McDevitt
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. View quote
Jack McDevitt
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. View quote
Jack McDevitt
At night the sea is very loud, And voices ride the tide. At another time, in another place, Beneath the silent moon, We laughed together. View quote
Jack McDevitt
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. View quote
Jack McDevitt
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. (Jack McDevitt)
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. View quote
Jack McDevitt
"Alyx,” she said, "you're going to be a legend.” "I already am, Captain,” she said. View quote
Jack McDevitt
Katie commented that Americans had lost the ability to enjoy themselves. "We watch television,” Dave said. View quote
Jack McDevitt
One should always be skeptical. That's always been our problem. We have too many believers.” "Believers in what? View quote
Jack McDevitt
He objected on principle to the powerful. View quote
Jack McDevitt
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. View quote
Jack McDevitt
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. View quote
Jack McDevitt
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. View quote
Jack McDevitt
(He was) tall and lean, an aristocrat by inclination, born into money and influence and never recovered. View quote
Jack McDevitt
Why is it that people want so desperately to shake hands with otherworldly beings? That people will even insist that they have seen visitors from Spica hovering above their backyards? In other times it was ghosts and fairies and goblins, and voices in the night. Is the company of our own species so dull that we need to invent the Other? On the other hand, maybe that explains it. (Jack McDevitt)
Max was the exception. He had no taste for military life or for the prospect of getting shot at. His father, Colonel Maxwell E. Collingwood, USAF (retired), to his credit, tried to hide his disappointment in his only son. But it was there nonetheless, and Max had, on more than one occasion, overheard him wondering aloud to Max's mother whether there was anything at all to genetics. View quote
Jack McDevitt
Yes, it was not journalism's finest hour. But, MacAllister often argued, it never had been. View quote
Jack McDevitt
Technology is dangerous.” "How do you mean?” "It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots. View quote
Jack McDevitt
Henry had been around long enough to know better than to disagree. But he forgot to implement. View quote
Jack McDevitt