If you want creative and successful children, resign yourself to jousting with rebels.
Jack McDevittMost 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 McDevittTruth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there's a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don't like it very much.
Jack McDevittThe 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.
Jack McDevittPeople tend to believe that good fortune consists of equal parts talent, hard work, and sheer luck. It's hard to deny the roles of the latter two. As to talent, I would only say it consists primarily in finding the right moment to step in.
Jack McDevittThroughout our long and sorry history it has been men who supposed themselves to be exemplars of integrity who have done all the damage. Every crusade, whether for decent literary standards or to cover women's bodies or to free the holy land, had been launched, endorsed, and enthusiastically perpetrated by men of character.
Jack McDevitt