Jack McDevitt Quotes
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We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.
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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.
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Boundaries have no existence save on charts or in small minds. Nature does not draw lines.
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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.
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Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.
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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.
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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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Katie commented that Americans had lost the ability to enjoy themselves. "We watch television," Dave said.
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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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Courage is perhaps our most admirable trait. The man, or woman, who possesses it is able to plunge ahead, despite dangers, despite warnings, despite hazards of all kinds, to attack the task at hand. Often, it is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.
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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.
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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.
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Solitude is only a good idea if you have the right people along to share it.
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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.
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The measure of a civilization is in the courage, not of its soldiers, but of its bystanders.
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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.
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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.
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Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes the cost of integrity is the loss of a friend.
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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?
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If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.
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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.
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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.
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Intelligence is like pornography. I can't define it, but I know if when I see it.
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There is nothing that overwhelms the senses quite like an unwelcome silence.
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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.
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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.
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