Coming Home Quotes

“I don’t think I’d have wanted to be around during a dark age. It’s odd, though. They had interstellar flight. And data retrieval and everything.” Gabe nodded. “None of it matters if you have an unstable society and tin-pot dictators. They had several hundred years of economic collapse. Widespread poverty. A few people at the top had all the money and influence. They had terrible overpopulation, struggles over water and resources. Civil wars. And widespread illiteracy.” The thirty-second to the thirty-ninth century. “It’s a wonder we survived.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“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.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“Few people achieve greatness. One reason is that the opportunity, for the vast majority of us, never even shows up. Another is that if it does, it will inevitably look like a long shot. And the temptation invariably is to play it safe.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“The vast majority of us are far more capable than we realize. We grow up with parents, teachers, bosses all telling us what we can’t do. Don’t touch it; you’ll break it. They mean well, but they leave us with a sense of our own incapacity. When the day comes, if it comes, that you begin to believe in yourself, the world will be yours. —Mara”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“Unfortunately,” he said, “we have short memories. Most heroes are forgotten by the next news cycle.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“Time’s the king of men, He’s both their parent, and he is their grave, And gives them what he will, not what they crave. —William Shakespeare, Pericles”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“The vast majority of us are far more capable than we realize. We grow up with parents, teachers, bosses all telling us what we can’t do. Don’t touch it; you’ll break it. They mean well, but they leave us with a sense of our own incapacity. When the day comes, if it comes, that you begin to believe in yourself, the world will be yours.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“I’d enjoyed my time with Gabe. This should not be read as a criticism of Alex in any way, but he was easier to talk to. More amiable. There was no subject that didn’t interest him. He loved to talk about history and politics and religion. He was passionate about everything but never in the sense that he’d get angry if you disagreed with him. In fact, he seemed to enjoy contrary opinions and was always willing to listen. Once or twice, I thought I even succeeded in changing his mind.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“Cape Canaveral. The ultimate historic site. And it’s underwater. How could they not have noticed what was going on? They went to the Moon, and they couldn’t see that the glaciers were melting?” “I’m sure they did,” said Alex. “But you know how people are. They’re going to resist changing a lifestyle unless the danger is looking them directly in the eye. The glaciers must have seemed like somebody else’s problem.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“You wander around near Independence Park and the Hall of the People, and you get a sense that they will be there forever. But forever is a long time. The people who lived in Washington before the waters came probably thought that about their city. But it’s all temporary, baby. Perpetuity is an illusion.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“The most important thing we’ve done,” he said to an audience at Andiquar University, “was to get off-world. That was the single act that opened the universe to us. We owe all that to the men and women who made the Apollo flights possible and especially to those who put their lives at risk, and who sometimes paid the price, to actually ride the vehicles. They got us started. Once we’d set foot on the Moon, it was inevitable that we’d go on to Rimway and Dellaconda and the edge of the galaxy. We knew it would take a while. That we’d get in our own way. That we’d be discouraged by the vast distances involved simply in going to Mars. We understood that we were probably facing an empty and cold universe. But it was the beginning, and in our hearts we must have known we would not be stopped.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home

“He told me once about the secret of life. You know what it is?” “I’m not sure what George thinks it is.” “It’s having lunch with friends.”
― Jack McDevitt, Coming Home