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.

Defend your opinion only if it can be shown to be true, not because it is your opinion.

Prudence, and experience, suggested she expect the worst.

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

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.

(He was) tall and lean, an aristocrat by inclination, born into money and influence and never recovered.

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.

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

The invention of the printing press probably marks the beginning of the decline of civilization. Once you have it, science follows close behind. Next thing you know the idiots have better weaponry. Then atom bombs. Meantime, social organization becomes increasingly dependent on technology, which becomes increasingly vulnerable to error or sabotage. If we can judge by our own experience, it looks as if you get the printing press, then about a thousand years. After that it’s back to the trees.

The reality is, we don’t want our kids to be smart. We want them to be like us. Only more so.

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.

The creative act requires both will and intelligence. Breaking things is easy. You only need a hammer.