Jack McDevitt > Quotes

“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 a good news.”
― Jack McDevitt, Deepsix

“The real problem has to do with the inability by people to admit that a position they've held a long time might be wrong. That's all. Not that it is. Just that it might be. I don't know why it is, but we tend to fall in love with things we believe, Threaten them, and you threaten us.”
― Jack McDevitt, Firebird

“We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.”
― Jack McDevitt, Infinity Beach

“Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there's a reason it gets beaten down. Usually we don't like it very much.”
― Jack McDevitt, Odyssey

“Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.”
― Jack McDevitt, The Engines of God

“Drink deep the cup of life; take it's dark wine into your soul. For it passes round the table only once.”
― Jack McDevitt, Seeker

“We live along the shores of night,
At the edge of the eternal sea.”
― Jack McDevitt, Infinity Beach

“...those whose tastes run to personal power [can] never be trusted to act save in the pursuit of their own ambition.”
― Jack McDevitt, Infinity Beach

“Superman and Batman got their start, we think, during the twenty-fourth century. Except for a brief period during the Dark Age, they’ve never gone away.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“I don’t think I’d have wanted to be around during a dark age. It’s odd, though. They had interstellar flight. And data retrieval and everything.” Gabe nodded. “None of it matters if you have an unstable society and tin-pot dictators. They had several hundred years of economic collapse. Widespread poverty. A few people at the top had all the money and influence. They had terrible overpopulation, struggles over water and resources. Civil wars. And widespread illiteracy.” The thirty-second to the thirty-ninth century. “It’s a wonder we survived.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“She wondered whether the world's problems might be solved by access to the stars. Or simply exported.”
― jack mcdevitt, The Engines of God

“Few people achieve greatness. One reason is that the opportunity, for the vast majority of us, never even shows up. Another is that if it does, it will inevitably look like a long shot. And the temptation invariably is to play it safe.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“Intelligence and compassion are the heart of what it means to be human. Help others where you can. That is clear enough. But a Creator may well want us to open our eyes, as well. If there is a judgment, God may not be particularly interested in how many hymns we sang or what prayers we memorized. I suspect He may instead look at us and say, “I gave you a brain, and you never used it. I gave you the stars, and you never looked.” —Marcia Tolbert, Centauri Days, 3111 C.E.”
― Jack McDevitt, Firebird

“Man has always seen himself the peak of creation. The part of the universe that thinks. The purpose for it all. It's no doubt a gratifying view, but the universe may have a different opinion.”
― Jack McDevitt, Seeker

“You notice, by the way, that we never have a meeting with an alien. It’s always an encounter.”
― Jack McDevitt, Thunderbird

“The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.”
― Jack McDevitt, The Engines of God

“Drink deep the cup of life; Take its dark wine into your soul, For it passes round the table only once.”
― Jack McDevitt, Seeker

“And never forget," Michael said, "time travelers never die. No matter what you saw up ahead, about me, I'll always be here.”
― Jack McDevitt, Time Travelers Never Die

“And, in a way, we're all time travelers. Somehow, the entire temporal stream exists, but we're only conscious of a single moment.”
― Jack McDevitt, Time Travelers Never Die

“Contemporaries only know the authority figures and the loudmouths. And the people born into power. But it takes perspective to know who's carrying the load. Nobody here has a clue who Johannes Kepler is. All they know about Galileo is that he's a teacher who got in trouble with the Inquisition. I doubt anyone's heard of Francis Bacon. Even in Britain, nobody really knows him. He's just a guy with a funny name.”
― Jack McDevitt, Time Travelers Never Die

“A friend is a second self.”
― Jack McDevitt, Time Travelers Never Die

“He had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind. 'That Might be our future in that box.'
'The future is ours to take, Jack we don't need anybody to give it to us.' Walker looked out through the windows at the lake. It was immense.”
― Jack McDevitt

“The assumption had always been that if people are well fed, feel secure, and have decent homes, everything will be fine. But they needed something else as well. Call it self-respect or a sense of purpose. Whatever, it was missing now. Maybe spreading out through the galaxy would provide it, maybe not. But she was convinced that if the human race simply settled onto its collective front porch, as it seemed to be doing, it had no future.”
― Jack McDevitt, Cauldron

“We recognize the contributions made by science, which improves our lives, and by the arts, which fill our lives. We have numbered among our students physicists and pianists, surgeons and dramatists. We set no limits to human endeavor.”
― McDevitt, Jack, Polaris

“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.”
― Jack McDevitt, Omega

“Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. To add to the mystery, the domain of our earthly existence is not only an island in infinite space, but also in infinite time. The past and the future are alike shrouded from us: we neither know the origin of anything which is, nor its final destination.”
― Jack McDevitt, Seeker

“Intelligence and compassion are the heart of what it means to be human. Help others where you can. That is clear enough. But a Creator may well want us to open our eyes, as well. If there is a judgment, God may not be particularly interested in how many hymns we sang or what prayers we memorized. I suspect He may instead look at us and say, “I gave you a brain, and you never used it. I gave you the stars, and you never looked.”
― Jack McDevitt, Firebird

“What’s the point of a god who never intervenes?”
― Jack McDevitt, Eternity Road: A Post-Apocalyptic Journey Past Pirates, Ghosts, and Machines to Haven

“Unfortunately,” he said, “we have short memories. Most heroes are forgotten by the next news cycle.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“Science is an investigation into reality, how atoms interact and biological systems develop and stars give heat. Myth is also an investigation into reality, but into a reality of a different type: It informs us of the deepest desires and fears of the subconscious mind. The place where we really live.”
― Jack McDevitt, Firebird