Top 80 James Rollins Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Festina lente. Make haste slowly.”

— James Rollins

2. “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change. – ALBERT EINSTEIN.”

— James Rollins

3. “Always respect Mother Nature. Especially when she weighs 400 pounds and is guarding her baby.”

— James Rollins

4. “Our journey is about faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Not the proving of such things.”

— James Rollins

5. “Time did indeed heal all wounds, but it left a nasty, unforgiving scar.”

— James Rollins

6. “Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark by Sir Laurence Gardner.”

— James Rollins

7. “We must savor every moment given us,” she stressed. “We know not where this journey ends so we must wring each scrap of joy out of it while it lasts.”

— James Rollins

8. “It ain’t always rocket science, sometimes a door is just a door.”

— James Rollins

9. “Books are keys that open many doors – James Rollins.”

— James Rollins

10. “Hermetic principle often associated with the Knights Templar: As above, so below.”

— James Rollins

11. “The strong were always eating the weak.”

— James Rollins

12. “Overfishing of the past fifty years has driven the population of large fish down by ninety percent. And climate change is acidifying and warming the waters, lessening its ability to hold oxygen, suffocating marine life. We are rapidly killing the seas beyond the ability to heal.”

— James Rollins

13. “Often life asks much of you, and you either honor life by answering with all your heart, or you cower your way into your grave.”

— James Rollins

14. “In the face of inhumanity, a good man reacts, but a great one acts.”

— James Rollins

15. “Mithraism predated Christianity yet bore uncanny similarities. Mithra’s birthday was celebrated on December 25. The god’s worship involved baptism and the consumption of a sacred meal of bread and wine. Mithra also had twelve disciples, held Sunday sacred, and described a heaven and a hell. Upon his death, Mithra was also buried in a tomb, only to rise again in three days.”

— James Rollins

16. “Throughout history, knowledge rises and falls, ebbs and flows. What once was known is forgotten again, lost in time, sometimes for centuries, only to be rediscovered ages later.”

— James Rollins

17. “Andy Harp’s RETRIBUTION is a stunner: a blow to the gut and shot of adrenaline. Here is a novel written with authentic authority and bears shocking relevance to the dangers of today. It reminds me of Tom Clancy at his finest. Put this novel on your must-read list-anything by Harp is now on mine.”

— James Rollins

18. “A war is coming, a battle that will stretch from the prehistoric forests of the ancient past to the cutting-edge research labs of today, all to reveal a true mystery buried deep within our DNA, a mystery that will leave readers changed forever .”

— James Rollins

19. “Often-times it’s madness, not genius that moves the world forward. Who else but the mad would reach so far, stretching for the impossible and, in so doing, prove the impossible possible!”

— James Rollins

20. “The hope for our nation and our world lies within our ability to innovate and move forward technologically.”

— James Rollins

21. “The truth is often one’s best shield.”

— James Rollins

22. “The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it’s time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.”

— James Rollins

23. “I was all set to blow some crap up.”

— James Rollins

24. “When someone is always looking over their shoulder, they’re more likely to trip.”

— James Rollins

25. “Fiction writing was in my blood from a very young age, but I never considered writing as a real career. I thought you had to have some literary pedigree to be a successful author, the son of Hemingway or Fitzgerald.”

— James Rollins

26. “Most major Christian groups – Catholics, Byzantines, Nestorians, Jacobites – believe Mary’s father was a man named Joachim. But this is contested. The Koran claims she descended from a highly respected family, that of Imran. As does the Jewish faith.”

— James Rollins

27. “Never trust those who would be your shield. They feed on your ignorance and darkness. It is best to look at things directly and be unafraid.”

— James Rollins

28. “If it’s worth doing, I guess it’s worth overdoing.”

— James Rollins

29. “I think the worst and most insidious procrastination for me is research. I will be looking for some bit of fact or figure to include in the novel, and before I know, I’ve wasted an entire morning delving into that subject matter without a word written.”

— James Rollins

30. “Remember, child, life is not a straight line. It cycles.”

— James Rollins

31. “I read anything I could get my hands on: science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers. I even became hooked on the Bantam reprints of the old pulp novels from thirties and forties: Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Avenger.”

— James Rollins

32. “I don’t actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I’m most often inspired while reading – both fiction and nonfiction.”

— James Rollins

33. “I am a collector of bread crumbs, all those bits of science and history that I mash and knead together to build my stories. And now that the bread is baked and served, my goal here is to try to separate those slices of the story that are based on substantial fact from those that are pure fabrication.”

— James Rollins

34. “Right now there are some fifteen thousand scientists authorized to work with deadly pathogens, but there are zero federal agencies charged with assessing the risks of all of these labs, let alone even keeping track of their number. As a consequence, there’ve been countless reports of mishandling of contagious pathogens, of vials gone missing, of poor records.”

— James Rollins

35. “SIG Sauer P365.”

— James Rollins

36. “Still, she eyed the pair. She knew better than to underestimate an opponent. Defeat lay along that path. There could be strengths to this pair that bore watching.”

— James Rollins

37. “Generally, if you preface an interview request with, ‘I’m an author writing a book,’ for some reason, that seems to open a lot of doors.”

— James Rollins

38. “Sin’jari didn’t give her a chance to formulate a plan. He lunged at her. But years of karate training and four older brothers had honed her reflexes.”

— James Rollins

39. “Whenever I start a novel, I’m always looking for two things: a bit of science that makes me go ‘what if?’ and a piece of history that ends in a question mark.”

— James Rollins

40. “I’m pretty disciplined to keep the momentum of a story going by writing everyday, even if it’s only a couple paragraphs or a page or two.”

— James Rollins

41. “I subscribe to National Geographic, Scientific American, Discover, and a slew of other magazines. And it is while reading articles for pleasure and interest that an interesting What if? will pop into my head.”

— James Rollins

42. “Remember, time is just a dimension. It has no inherent flow backward or forward.” “In other words, the distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion?”

— James Rollins

43. “It is a tradition among our desert tribes. A man may borrow what he needs. Stealing is crime.”

— James Rollins

44. “Bristol-Meyers Squibb has reported success with monatomic ruthenium to correct cancer cells. Same with platinum and iridium, according to Platinum Metals Review. These atoms actually make the DNA strand correct itself, rebuilding without drugs or radiation. Iridium has been shown to stimulate the pineal gland and appears to fire up ‘junk DNA,’ leading to the possibility of increased longevity and reopening aging pathways in the brain.”

— James Rollins

45. “WHAT IS REALITY? It’s both the simplest question to answer – and the hardest. Over the ages, it has baffled both philosophers and physicists. In The Republic, Plato described the true world as nothing more than a flickering shadow on a cave wall. Oddly enough, millennia later, scientists have come full circle to a similar conclusion.”

— James Rollins

46. “Biblical references about knowledge and good and evil often get tangled up.”

— James Rollins

47. “We need religion, government, and laws to force a level of control over our baser natures. I intend to strip away the disease that is intelligence, to rip away the deception that allows humanity to believe itself mightier and more deserving of this planet.”

— James Rollins

48. “Better to head off into the unknown than stay here, where death was most certain.”

— James Rollins

49. “Guns, grendels, or nuclear bombs; take your pick.”

— James Rollins

50. “They wanted them to look like the Gods. God doesn’t look like this.”

— James Rollins