Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jack McDevitt Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Jack McDevitt.

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Famous Quotes By Jack McDevitt

Jack McDevitt Quotes 1946154

Cape Canaveral. The ultimate historic site. And it's underwater. How could they not have noticed what was going on? They went to the Moon, and they couldn't see that the glaciers were melting?" "I'm sure they did," said Alex. "But you know how people are. They're going to resist changing a lifestyle unless the danger is looking them directly in the eye. The glaciers must have seemed like somebody else's problem. — Jack McDevitt

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If you're paying attention to your wardrobe, Rudy believed, your mind isn't sufficiently occupied. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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I was thinking how much trouble people get into because they can't keep their mouths shut. — Jack McDevitt

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Solitude is only a good idea if you have the right people along to share it. — Jack McDevitt

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I had never realized that so much communication was non-verbal. That language was a kind of refinement of information passed by other means. We discovered that, with the most limited vocabulary, a half dozen words, you could still cover a lot of ground. And eventually, Belle came back. — Jack McDevitt

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The secret to a successful career in virtually any field is good public relations. Forget results. Forget the facts. Perception is all that matters. — Jack McDevitt

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Marinda Harbach explained why we have such a bloody history. "Serious predators," she said, "do not kill one another. Never have. A tiger understands, for example, it's dangerous to attack another tiger. It's not at all certain who will end up dead." But humans had never been serious predators. On the contrary, they'd been innocuous creatures, had eaten whatever came to hand, and never developed the instinct to avoid quarrels. "After all," she said, "when a fight breaks out between two monkeys, somebody gets a few lumps, but that's about all. They actually enjoy it. Brain scans make the point beyond question. By the time the monkeys discovered advanced weaponry, it was too late. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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What would happen is that people like Geroge and Alyx would grow old and die chasing a dream. Although there were probably worse things to do with one's life. — Jack McDevitt

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You wander around near Independence Park and the Hall of the People, and you get a sense that they will be there forever. But forever is a long time. The people who lived in Washington before the waters came probably thought that about their city. But it's all temporary, baby. Perpetuity is an illusion. — Jack McDevitt

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There are few professions whose primary objective is to advance the cause of humanity rather than simply to make money or accrue power. Among this limited group of humanitarians I would number teachers, nurses, bookstore owners, and bartenders. — Jack McDevitt

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Sometimes the cost of integrity is the loss of a friend. — Jack McDevitt

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Home. It is the place where once we lived and laughed, where we grew up with the assumption that all would be well, where we met our first love, where life stretched endlessly ahead. This is the place that now becomes a desert of the heart. — Jack McDevitt

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The most important thing we've done," he said to an audience at Andiquar University, "was to get off-world. That was the single act that opened the universe to us. We owe all that to the men and women who made the Apollo flights possible and especially to those who put their lives at risk, and who sometimes paid the price, to actually ride the vehicles. They got us started. Once we'd set foot on the Moon, it was inevitable that we'd go on to Rimway and Dellaconda and the edge of the galaxy. We knew it would take a while. That we'd get in our own way. That we'd be discouraged by the vast distances involved simply in going to Mars. We understood that we were probably facing an empty and cold universe. But it was the beginning, and in our hearts we must have known we would not be stopped. — Jack McDevitt

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So we have progressed to the point where we can move politicians around faster than light. I'm not sure I see the advantage. — Jack McDevitt

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Religion is like having children, or taking medicine, or eating, or any of a thousand other perfectly rational human activities: Taken in small doses, it has much to recommend it. One need only avoid going overboard. — Jack McDevitt

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Unfortunately," he said, "we have short memories. Most heroes are forgotten by the next news cycle. — Jack McDevitt

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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 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. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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The uplifters are forever running around telling blockheads they would do better if they would believe in themselves. But they already do. That is why they are blockheads. — Jack McDevitt

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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? — Jack McDevitt

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Most of us sleepwalk through our lives. We take all its glories, its wine, food, love, and friendship, its sunsets and its stars, its poetry and fireplaces and laughter, for granted. We forget that experience is not, or should not be, a casual encounter, but rather an embrace. Consequently, for too many of us, when we come to the end, we wonder where the years have gone. And we suspect we have not lived. — Jack McDevitt

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Those whose tastes run to personal power [can] never be trusted to act save in the pursuit of their own ambition. — Jack McDevitt

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The vast majority of us are far more capable than we realize. We grow up with parents, teachers, bosses all telling us what we can't do. Don't touch it; you'll break it. They mean well, but they leave us with a sense of our own incapacity. When the day comes, if it comes, that you begin to believe in yourself, the world will be yours. — Jack McDevitt

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There is nothing that overwhelms the senses quite like an unwelcome silence. — Jack McDevitt

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It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots. — Jack McDevitt

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An ocean with a single shore gets little traffic. — Jack McDevitt

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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There were serious environmental problems left over from the Industrial Age, and the deterioration of the global climate seemed to coincide with political leaders who grew increasingly ruthless. The worst of these was Marko III, known to his American subjects as The Magnificent. — Jack McDevitt

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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The individual human life span is brief and, in the long view, inconsequential,' he said. 'We are children one day and signing out the next. Therefore, in the brief moment we are allotted, live reasonably, be compassionate, and when your hour comes, accept it without histrionics. Never forget that your handful of hours is a supreme gift. Use them wisely, do not fritter them away, and remember that your life is not an entitlement. — Jack McDevitt

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Universal deities ... never seem to smile. Not in any culture. What's the point of having omnipotence if you don't enjoy it? — Jack McDevitt

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I'm prepared to concede that stupidity does not help survival. One must after all understand not to poke a tiger with a stick. But intelligence leads to curiosity, and curiosity has never been a quality that helps one pour his or her genes into the pool. The truth must lie somewhere between. Whatever the reason, it is clearly mediocrity, at best, that lives and breeds. — Jack McDevitt

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You notice, by the way, that we never have a meeting with an alien. It's always an encounter. — Jack McDevitt

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Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects. — Jack McDevitt

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The measure of a civilization is in the courage, not of its soldiers, but of its bystanders. — Jack McDevitt

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A friend is a second self. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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We live along the shores of night,
At the edge of the eternal sea. — Jack McDevitt

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The truth is that when your people don't tell you what you need to know, it's a failure of leadership. — Jack McDevitt

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People who wear their religion on their sleeves talk a lot about going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, and doing good works. And I suppose there's no harm in that. But if I'd gone to the trouble to pull all this together ... and people never paid any attention to it, never bothered to try to find out how the world worked, then I think I'd get annoyed. — Jack McDevitt

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Technological civilizations don't last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins. — Jack McDevitt

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Life is a walk in the fog. Most people don't know that. They're fooled by the sunlight into thinking they can see what's ahead. But it's the reason they are forever getting lost or falling into ditches or committing matrimony. — Jack McDevitt

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Boundaries have no existence save on charts or in small minds. Nature does not draw lines. — Jack McDevitt

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Live from Babylon and Ur, From Athens and Alexandria and Rome, The voices of a thousand generations, Press us, Urge us on-. — Jack McDevitt

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One of the CNN guys was literally yelling. How can you say that? It's too dangerous for us? We still have people in Syria! — Jack McDevitt

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Squeej? What kind of name was that for a pilot? — Jack McDevitt

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Money bought access. But the Second American Revolution had happened, people began taking the Constitution seriously again, and the practice of renting and buying congressmen had been stopped by the simple expedient of getting money out of the campaigns. Contributions of all types became illegal. Campaigns were funded by the voters. You gave money to a politician, it constituted bribery, and you could go to jail. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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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

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How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top? — Jack McDevitt

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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

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So long as men and women are free, no one is safe. People will be in danger because others can't operate vehicles responsibly or shoot straight. Because physicians are sometimes incompetent and lawyers dishonest. But most of all they will be in danger from ideas. It is the price we willingly pay to be free. Nor would we have it any other way. — Jack McDevitt

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Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters. — Jack McDevitt

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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So long as you believe in some truth you do not believe in yourself. You are a servant. A man of faith. — Jack McDevitt

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I am persuaded that your people are foolish beyond any reasonable expectation. Not all of them. Obviously, there are many who are reasonable. Otherwise, you could never have reached this world. But the intelligence seems to be confined to a relatively few individuals. When your people come together as a group, they do not perform well. — Jack McDevitt

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There is no justice. There are occasional acts of vengeance, or regret, but there's no real justice. In the natural scheme of things, it is not possible. — Jack McDevitt

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

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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We are better than our culture. Load us down with prejudice, equip us with indifference, and we will nevertheless, at the critical moment, cast the nonsense aside and find our true selves. — Jack McDevitt

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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My father used to take me to the movies on Saturdays. In 1940, when I was four years old, we encountered 'Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.' I loved it. Especially the rocket ship, which I later realized had no airlock and no washroom. But they managed to get to Mongo with it. — Jack McDevitt

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People tend to believe that good fortune consists of equal parts talent, hard work, and sheer luck. It's hard to deny the roles of the latter two. As to talent, I would only say it consists primarily in finding the right moment to step in. — Jack McDevitt

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An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line. — Jack McDevitt

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The home world exercises its siren call over us all. No matter how far we wander, or how long we are gone, it waits patiently. And when we return to it, as we must, it sings to us. We came out of its forests, waded ashore from its seas. It is in our blood, for good or ill. — Jack McDevitt

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Katie commented that Americans had lost the ability to enjoy themselves. "We watch television," Dave said. — Jack McDevitt

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Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals. — Jack McDevitt

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There's not much to be said for sightseeing. You go somewhere that has a waterfall. You have a beer, watch the water go over the edge, and move on. Tours are all the same. In the end, the only thing that matters is the beer. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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See what the world looks like from orbit. Well, in that way, at least, there was profit to be had. Nobody could look down at the planet, green and blue, with no borders in evidence and no sign of human habitation, and not get his perspective forever altered. — Jack McDevitt

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The term congressional hearing is an oxymoron. No congressional hearing is ever called to gather information. Rather, it is an exercise designed strictly for posturing, by people who have already made up their minds, looking for ammunition to support their positions. — Jack McDevitt

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I was once invited to attend a private dinner for Senator John F. Kennedy. But it was a Saturday evening, and I passed. Had better things to do. — Jack McDevitt

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She wondered whether the world's problems might be solved by access to the stars. Or simply exported. — Jack McDevitt

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If you're right, and nobody really cares what's out there, I wonder whether we're even worth saving. — Jack McDevitt

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Chase has told me about your efforts to get the church to recognize AIs as sentient creatures." "Ah, yes. That's not exactly how we phrased the issue, but it's true. Yes." "How did you phrase it?" "We've tried to make the point that they may have souls. And that even if we can't be certain, we should assume that they do. An error in this matter should be made on the side of caution." "You're concerned," he asked, "that they may be punished in an afterlife because they weren't admitted to churches?" "No. I'm concerned that we may be judged negligent for the way in which we've treated them. — Jack McDevitt

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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Doesn't matter, does it?" said George. "They're just as dead. Their blood is on your hands." "They don't have blood." "Humans are only literal when they're ashamed of something. — Jack McDevitt

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Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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When things go wrong, the standard management strategy is to decide who takes the blame. This should be an underling, as far down the chain as possible, but preferably with some visibility so people know management means business. — Jack McDevitt

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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Thanks to the comic book publishers. Batman and Captain Marvel were responsible for my learning to read at least a year before I showed up at school. They got me interested in writing. Started my first novel at about eight. The title: 'The Canals of Mars.' — Jack McDevitt

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Lies hold civilization together. If people ever seriously begin telling each other what they really think, there'd be no peace. Good-bye to tact. Good-bye to being polite. Good-bye to showing tolerance for other people's buffooneries. The fact that we claim to admire Truth is probably the biggest lie of all. But that's part of the charade, part of what makes us human, and we do not even think about it. In effect, we lie to ourselves. Lies are only despicable when they betray a trust. — Jack McDevitt

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There'd been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate. — Jack McDevitt

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He's so obsessed with trying to analyze the architecture — Jack McDevitt

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Certain types of decisions can be safely ignored. Some issues will go away with the passage of time, others will be so slow developing that the decision-makers will depart before the results of their neglect becomes manifest. Which brings us to the environment. — Jack McDevitt

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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. — Jack McDevitt

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He told me once about the secret of life. You know what it is?" "I'm not sure what George thinks it is." "It's having lunch with friends. — Jack McDevitt

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When I was teaching English and trying to get kids passionate about reading, the most effective weapon I had was 'The Martian Chronicles.' — Jack McDevitt

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Intelligence is like pornography. I can't define it, but I know if when I see it. — Jack McDevitt

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If you want creative and successful children, resign yourself to jousting with rebels. — Jack McDevitt

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Time is like a river. As soon as a thing is seen, it is carried away and another takes its place, and then that other is carried away also. — Jack McDevitt

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All of the important things ... will turn out to be universally shared. It's why there will be no true aliens. — Jack McDevitt

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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

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Truly evil persons do not recognize their own malevolence. They perceive themselves as generous, good-hearted, friendly sorts, who sometimes have to resort to unpleasant tactics for the general betterment of society. Even the historical monsters seem to have had no second thoughts about the damage they were causing. It was that way with Hitler and Oliver Moresby, just as it was with the Greer Avenue Strangler. — Jack McDevitt