Quotes from Jack McDevitt

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

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.

But, come to think of it, there was no need to wait. Time travelers don't have to wait for anybody.

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

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

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

Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there's a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don't like it very much.

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.

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.

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.

We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.

Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there's a reason it gets beaten down. Usually we don't like it very much.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

And, in a way, we're all time travelers. Somehow, the entire temporal stream exists, but we're only conscious of a single moment.

Drink deep the cup of life; Take its dark wine into your soul, For it passes round the table only once.

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.

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