Jack McDevitt - Experience Quotes

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Well, kids are never much on history. Nor for that matter was anybody else. It had been MacAllister's experience that most people think anything that happened before they were born didn't count for a whole lot.

Jack McDevitt
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.

Jack McDevitt
A man is entitled to only one great passion in a lifetime. Whether it's music or a profession or a woman, everything else pales in its afterglow. The searing shock so changes one's chemistry that if the object is lost, the experience can never be repeated. Only anticlimax remains.

Jack McDevitt
Prudence, and experience, suggested she expect the worst.

Jack McDevitt
It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.

Jack McDevitt
Her experience had taught her that people who insisted on having others recognize their outstanding qualities usually didn't have any.

Jack McDevitt
Most of us sleepwalk through our lives. We take all its glories, its wine, food, love, and friendship, its sunsets and its stars, its poetry and fireplaces and laughter, for granted. We forget that experience is not, or should not be, a casual encounter, but rather an embrace. Consequently, for too many of us, when we come to the end, we wonder where the years have gone. And we suspect we have not lived.

Jack McDevitt