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 them… - Jack McDevitt

Why is it that people want so desperately to shake hands with otherworldly beings? That people will even insist that they have seen visitors from Spica hovering above their backyards? In other times it was ghosts and fairies and goblins, and voices in the night. Is the company of our own species so dull that we need to invent the Other? On the other hand, maybe that explains it.

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.

The queen of virtues is the recognition of one’s own flaws.