Jack McDevitt
American science fiction author.
(He was) tall and lean, an aristocrat by inclination, born into money and influence and never recovered.
“It’s all PR,” said Hutchins. “If we ever produced a person who was unrelentingly honest, everybody would want him dead.”
The beginning of wisdom is to admit to being inept. We’re all a bit slow. We have our moments, but in the end, we have to resort to bumbling through. It is what makes conviction so egregious.
So long as you believe in some truth you do not believe in yourself. You are a servant. A man of faith.
In the larger scale of things, his opinions didn’t count anyhow. The politicians made the decisions, and the voters paid no attention.
He would make a good manager, but he had a little too much integrity to survive in a top job.
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.
How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top?
The queen of virtues is the recognition of one’s own flaws.
The impending collision out there somewhere in the great dark between a gas giant and a world very much like our own has some parallels to the eternal collision between religion and common sense. One is bloated and full of gas, and the other is measurable and solid. One engulfs everything around it, and the other simply provides a place to stand. One is a rogue destroyer that has come in out of the night, and the other is a warm well-lighted place vulnerable to the sainted mobs.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I think life is just one long series of blown opportunities.”
It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.
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.
“The media have gone berserk.”
“The media always go berserk. A kid falls off a bike in Montana, they’re all over it. Until something else happens.”
So we have progressed to the point where we can move politicians around faster than light. I'm not sure I see the advantage.
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.
If you're paying attention to your wardrobe, Rudy believed, your mind isn’t sufficiently occupied.
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.
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.
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.