Jack McDevitt Quotes

Starships, of course, have few limitations with regard to design, the prime specification being simply that they not disintegrate during acceleration or course change.

The belief that society was in decline was a permanent characteristic of every era. People always believed they lived in a crumbling world. They themselves were of course okay, but everyone around them was headed downhill.

Those who rise to the top of organizations, who live to direct others, to wield power, are inevitably afflicted by weak egos, by a need to prove themselves. This explains why they are so easily frightened and so easily manipulated. And why they are so dangerous.

If you’ll forgive me, sir, physics is not politics. You can’t make things happen by trying harder.

Come on, Harold. People like us can always find experts to tell us what we want to hear. It’s the biggest problem we have. Everybody lies to us because they want things from us.

Charlie was not a believer. He did not expect to be called to account and assigned a score for what he had done or left undone. His parents had believed in a mechanical world, a place of evolving hardware and software, no deities need apply. We just haven’t figured it all out yet, his father was fond of saying. Things get more complex and we don’t know why. But that doesn’t mean we have to ascribe it to divine providence.

Politics was a struggle for power, in its purest and simplest terms. If the voters were lucky, the winner would go on to improve their lot, because he would need their votes next time. Or because he enjoyed being popular. But issues were irrelevant. Always had been, probably. Once the age of mass communications arrived, presidents became entertainers, celebrities, if they were smart. FDR used his fireside chats; Kennedy had allowed spontaneous questions at press conferences, relying on wit and charm. Reagan knew from the films exactly how a president should behave, and he had exactly enough acting talent to bring it off. In that sense, he was the first modern president.

For Rick, it was a clear demonstration of what the game was really about. The media often maintained that campaigns weren’t substantive. But the media didn’t understand about electioneering. When they complained that issues were seldom discussed, that the debate got too personal, that in the end a fog of obfuscation was thrown over everything, they were missing the point: An election is an art form. Its purpose is not to illuminate the issues of the day, but to box in an opponent. To watch him try to wriggle free of charges and innuendo.

It was housed in one of those garish ultramodern steel and glass abstract buildings, designed to demonstrate a kind of mathematical flow but which really only succeeded in marring the landscape.

Like his father, he believed the universe a clockwork mechanism; and if there was a clockmaker, he’d hidden himself too well and had therefore no justifiable complaint with unbelievers.

As a rule, Evelyn disapproved of politicians. They tended to break down into two categories: the completely unprincipled, who comprised the vast majority; and those who lived by their principles no matter who suffered.

New worlds are always hard on old ideas.

Cities have a social utility, if only as places to get away from.

We know that when change comes, no one is more adamant in holding on to the past than those in power. They know change is inevitable, but they would, if they could, parcel it out in measured pieces. Grain for chickens.

A man without money is a bow without an arrow.