107 Quotes by Jack McDevitt

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Faith is conviction without evidence, and sometimes even in the face of contrary evidence. In some quarters, this quality is perceived as a virtue.

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

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.