““It’s so old,” she said, “that, had life developed, it would be billions of years older than we are. Imagine what such a civilization might be like.”
Dead, thought MacAllister. That’s what it would be like. The fact that no technologically advanced species had been found in all these years made it pretty clear that the damned things have no staying power. You could see it at home, where, starting with the Cold War, there’d already been a few close calls.
It explained the Fermi Paradox. Nobody visits us because they blow themselves up before they get that far.”

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 27 (p. 248)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "“It’s so old,” she said, “that, had life developed, it would be billions of years older than we are. Imagine what such …" by Jack McDevitt?

Jack McDevitt125

American novelist, Short story writer 1935

Related quotes

“She had made the choice for him - in a moment of flight and panic, but she had made it - not realizing that her Jace would rather die than be like this, and that she'd been not so much saving his life as damning him to an existence he would despise.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“Since the universe is infinitely old, you should see some very old stars. According to the big bang theory the universe is only 13 billion years old. No stars should be older than 13 billion years. In our cosmology, stars older than this should exist. So we are on the lookout for very old stars. We made some observations [a year ago] which we are still trying to explain but the simplest explanation seems to be that there stars that are 20 billion years old.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Jayant Narlikar's Cosmology

“Between the age of eighteen and twenty I had attained a conscious and constant union with the divine Presence and … I had done it all alone, with absolutely nobody to help me, not even books, you understand! When I found one — I had in my hands a little later Vivekananda's Raja Yoga — it seemed to me so wonderful a thing, you see, that someone could explain something to me! This made me gain in a few months what would have perhaps taken me years to do.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

As quoted in "Paris (1897-1904)", and in Bulletin, Volume 53 by the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (Pondicherry, India) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=VMzWAAAAMAAJ

“I must consider," said Monica with a smile, "but one can't do these things offhand--that is worse than doing nothing. I'll tell you what to do NOW. Why not go and stay with Aunt Anne? She would like to see you, I know, and I have always thought it rather lazy of you not to go there--she is rather a remarkable woman, and it's a pretty country. Have you ever been there?”

A. C. Benson (1862–1925) English essayist, poet, author and Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge

Source: Watersprings (1902), Chapter II, Restlessness.

“If I had known what it would be like to have it all… I might have been willing to settle for less.”

Jane Wagner (1935) Playwright, actress

"Lyn"
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)

“If I had known what it would be like to have it all… I might have been willing to settle for less.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

As "Lyn"
Contributions of Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)

“The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Four Ways to Forgiveness

"A Man of the People", p. 107
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)

“Slavery was at the root of what the Civil War was all about. If there had been no slavery, there would have been no war, and that ultimately what the Confederacy was fighting for was to preserve a nation based on a social system that incorporated slavery. Had that not been the case, there would have been no war. That's an issue that a lot of Southern whites today find hard to accept.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson "James McPherson: What They Fought For, 1861&ndash;1865" https://web.archive.org/web/20160309201904/http://www.booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?SID=55946-1 (22 May 1994), Booknotes, United States of America: National Cable Satellite Corporation <br class="br">1990s

“I was seven years old. What do you know when you’re seven years old? All my life, or so I thought, we’d been in the city of Alexandria, in the Street of the Carpenters, with the other Galileans, and sooner or later we were going home.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt (2005)

“What I saw was more than I could stand. The noise I heard had been made by Little Ann. All her life she had slept by Old Dan's side. And although he was dead, she had left the doghouse, had come back to the porch, and snuggled up by his side.”

Wilson Rawls book Where the Red Fern Grows

Source: Where the Red Fern Grows

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jack McDevitt125

Related quotes

Related topics