Jack McDevitt Quotes

No one is ever really a stranger. We cling to the belief that we share nothing with certain people. It's rubbish. We have almost everything in common with everyone.

Governments are different, and philosophies are different, but when it comes down to it, a schoolteacher is a schoolteacher is a schoolteacher. A butcher is a butcher is a butcher. We are people. And we are far more common than we ever imagine.

Meeting people from different countries makes you realise that everyone around the world has the same needs and aspirations.

The differences that separate human beings are nothing compared to the similarities that bond us together.

I think what travelling has done for me and for many generations of my family - my grandmother was a great example - it's really highlighted for me how similar we all are and how many values we all share as people on this planet.

Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It's an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.

I've found that the common humanity of people is the most relatable thing, and even if your stories are very specific about a different place, if you have a relatable core of humanity, people will go along with it.

If you actually get down to the nitty-gritty of the average Pakistani, the average Indian, the average whoever, what you really do know emotionally is that they're exactly the same.

People will be fascinated. We will think of each other in a far more homogeneous way, because we will know that there is something that is different from us. And when we say 'us,' it will mean as a species.

Because they're my stories, they're my version of events of the past three years. But I really hope people can hear their own stories within the songs and they can become our version of events.

I've learnt that the world over, everyone's essentially the same. We are all trying to have a nice time and get along with things.

An anthropologist will not excitedly report of a newly discovered tribe: 'They eat food! They breathe air! They use tools! They tell each other stories!' We humans forget how alike we are, living in a world that only reminds us of our differences.

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world.

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.

No part of the human community can live entirely on its own planet, with its own laws of motion and cut off from the rest of humanity.

We cannot understand our humanity just by studying individuals.

Vast sections of the world's population are inspired by the same desires and live for common interests that bind them together far more than they separate them.

To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

But we Americans are as other men, exactly. Of one blood, one species, one brain, one figure, one fundamental set of collective instincts, one solitary body of information, one everything. Superiority and inferiority are individual, not racial or national.

One of the things novels should do is shine a light on those parts of us that are common, the fibres that connect all of us. They should convey the sense that we're all connected, coming from the same tree, sharing common roots.

I try to explore, in terms of the life I know best, those things which are common to all cultures.

Let's not judge. Let's draw inspiration from each other's stories - successes and failures - and realize we're all connected.

The way I look at things, every religion is the same.

The world is not such a large place, and we have more in common with one another than we might think.