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Jack McDevitt Quotes

Jack McDevitt is an American science fiction author whose novels frequently deal with attempts to make contact with alien races, and with archaeology or xenoarchaeology. His two main series are the Alex Benedict series and the Priscilla Hutchins series.

McDevitt's first published story was "The Emerson Effect" in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981. Five years later, he published his first novel, The Hercules Text, about the discovery of an intelligently conceived signal whose repercussions threaten human civilization. This novel set the tone for many of McDevitt's following novels, which focused on making first contact. Frequently this theme is mixed with both trepidation before the unknown and a sense of wonder at the universe.

With The Engines of God , McDevitt introduced the idea of a universe that was once teeming with intelligent life, but contains only their abandoned artifacts by the time humans arrive on the scene. Although it was initially written as a standalone novel, the main character of The Engines of God, pilot Priscilla Hutchins, has since appeared in seven more books, Deepsix , Chindi , Omega , Odyssey , Cauldron , StarHawk , and The Long Sunset . The mystery surrounding the destructive "Omega Clouds" is left unexplored until Omega.McDevitt's novels frequently raise questions which he does not attempt to answer. He prefers to leave ambiguities to puzzle and intrigue his readers: "Some things are best left to the reader's very able imagination." The SF Site's Steven H Silver has written about this:



McDevitt has a tendency to give the impression that his novels will go in one direction and then take them in a different direction. Or possibly his background is so well thought out, that throw away lines, or subplots, or minor characters, have enough information behind them to make the reader want to see their story as much as the main plot of the book. While slightly annoying, this is, I've decided, a strength of McDevitt's writing since it shows the depth of his created worlds.

The novel Seeker won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has been nominated for the Nebula Award sixteen times; Seeker is his only win. Wikipedia  

✵ 14. April 1935
Jack McDevitt photo

Works

Ancient Shores
Ancient Shores
Jack McDevitt
The Hercules Text
The Hercules Text
Jack McDevitt
Infinity Beach
Infinity Beach
Jack McDevitt
Jack McDevitt: 125   quotes 3   likes

Famous Jack McDevitt Quotes

“Embrace your life, find what it is that you love, and pursue it with all your soul. For if you do not, when you come to die, you will find that you have not lived.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 36 (p. 487)

“At night the sea is very loud,
And voices ride the tide.
At another time, in another place,
Beneath the silent moon,
We laughed together.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 30 (p. 279)

“A man without money is a bow without an arrow.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, epigram for Chapter 18 (p. 180)
Ancient Shores (1996)

“There are few professions whose primary objective is to advance the cause of humanity rather than simply to make money or accrue power. Among this limited group of humanitarians I would number teachers, nurses, bookstore owners, and bartenders.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 14 (p. 124)

“Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 30 (p. 398)

“Sometimes,” he said, “I think life is just one long series of blown opportunities.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 22 (p. 327)

Jack McDevitt Quotes about people

“What would happen is that people like Geroge and Alyx would grow old and die chasing a dream. Although there were probably worse things to do with one’s life.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 12 (p. 165)

“A child’s mind is open to learn, and it is a cruel and heartless thing to fill it with myth disguised as history, to impose upon it a bogus lifelong perspective, and close it up again, leaving it proof against common sense and all argument. Surely, if there is a hell, people who do this are the ones who will get their tickets punched.
A judgment by the God who devised the quantum system should be considerably different from the one the Reverend Koestler envisions. I gave you a sky full of stars, and you never raised your eyes. I gave you a brain, and you never used it.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 12 (p. 113)

“The 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 McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 25 (p. 356)

“When things go wrong, the standard management strategy is to decide who takes the blame. This should be an underling, as far down the chain as possible, but preferably with some visibility so people know management means business.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 9 (p. 78)

“Why is it that people want so desperately to shake hands with otherworldly beings? That people will even insist that they have seen visitors from Spica hovering above their backyards? In other times it was ghosts and fairies and goblins, and voices in the night. Is the company of our own species so dull that we need to invent the Other? On the other hand, maybe that explains it.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 24 (p. 218)

““Most of my business comes from picking up the pieces when people get things wrong.” She grinned. “I’ll never lack for work.””

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 10 (p. 99)

Jack McDevitt Quotes about the truth

“Somewhere we taught ourselves that our opinions are more significant than the facts. And somehow we get our egos and our opinions and Truth all mixed up in a single package, so that when something does challenge one of the notions to which we subscribe, we react as if it challenges us.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003), Chapter 41 (p. 404)

“Freedom and idiots make a volatile mix. And the sad truth is that the idiocy quotient in the general population is alarmingly high.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 7 (p. 59)

“So long as you believe in some truth you do not believe in yourself. You are a servant. A man of faith.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 12 (p. 158), quoting Max Stiner

“The Reverend Pullman sat on the opposite side of the bench, wearing clerical garb and one of those unctuous smiles that proclaims a monopoly on truth.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 35 (p. 331)

“The notion that we need a higher power, that’s more a human failing than a reflection of reality. The universe pays no attention to what we need. Truth is what it is, and the inconveniences it might cause us don’t change anything.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 22 (p. 203)

“Few of the virtues are really useful. Fidelity leads to lost opportunity, truth-telling to injured feelings, charity to additional solicitations. The least productive, and possibly the most overrated, is faith. The faithful deny reason, close their minds to the evidence of their senses, and remain unfailingly optimistic in the face of disaster. They inevitably get just what they deserve.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 27 (p. 375)

Jack McDevitt: Trending quotes

“If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 28 (p. 256)

“He was usually easygoing, one of those guys with little respect for authority because of a conviction that people in charge tend to do stupid things.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 36 (p. 322)

People , Stupidity , Guy

“Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 39 (p. 370)

Decision

Jack McDevitt Quotes

“Politicians always seemed to be willing to sacrifice the general welfare to win votes.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 9 (p. 138)

“Plato is correct about democracy. It is essentially mob rule. And once the mob gets an idea into its collective head, it’s almost impossible to get it out, or modify it in any way. In an era of mass communication and irresponsible media, it can be a deadly characteristic.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 32 (p. 289)

Way , Democracy , Communication , Idea

“In the larger scale of things, his opinions didn’t count anyhow. The politicians made the decisions, and the voters paid no attention.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 4 (p. 31)

Decision

“Sometimes the cost of integrity is the loss of a friend.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 7 (p. 69)

Loss

““Alyx,” she said, “you're going to be a legend.”
“I already am, Captain,” she said.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 34 (p. 471)

“When do we reach a point where people become responsible for their own actions?”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 13 (pp. 124-125)

People

“Katie commented that Americans had lost the ability to enjoy themselves.
“We watch television,” Dave said.”

Jack McDevitt book Time Travelers Never Die

Source: Time Travelers Never Die (2009), Chapter 44 (p. 378)

“One should always be skeptical. That’s always been our problem. We have too many believers.”
“Believers in what?”

Jack McDevitt

“In everything.”
Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 5 (p. 72)

Problem

“He objected on principle to the powerful.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 16 (p. 213)

“An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 13 (p. 114)

School , Boy , Support , Thinking

“The stars are silent.
Voyager among dark harbors, I listen, but the midnight wind carries only the sound of trees and water lapping against the gunwale and the solitary cry of the night swallow.
There is no dawn. No searing sun rises in east or west. The rocks over Calumal do not silver, and the great round world slides through the void.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 10 Monitor (p. 162)

World , Star , Tree , Water

“Well, kids are never much on history. Nor for that matter was anybody else. It had been MacAllister’s experience that most people think anything that happened before they were born didn’t count for a whole lot.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 25 (p. 227)

People , History , Thinking

“Ah, Lord, if I doubt You, it is perhaps because You hide Yourself so well.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 4 (p. 63)

“I suspect we would be wise,” he said without looking up, “to avoid declaring what God will or will not allow.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 12 (p. 194)

God

“Secrecy is a compulsive reflex in this country. It strangles thought, delays scientific progress, and destroys integrity.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 7 (p. 105)

Country

“He expected to have only one clear shot at the assorted joys of living, and he had no intention of risking it to meet someone else’s misconceived expectations.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 2 (p. 18)

Joy

“Put the money into schools. Rational ones that train young minds to think, to demand that persons in authority show the evidence for the ideas they push. Do that, and we won’t need to provide a world for the Sacred Brethren who, given the opportunity, would run everyone else off the planet.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 2 (p. 13)

Money , World , School , Idea

“If you're paying attention to your wardrobe, Rudy believed, your mind isn’t sufficiently occupied.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 5 (p. 54)

“Maybe the universe doesn’t approve of places like New York.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 30 (p. 408)

Universe

“The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 8 (p. 107)

God , Nature , Knowledge

“Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The real guilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while the morons run wild. You can opt out if you want to. Play it safe. But if you do, don’t complain when the roof comes down.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 6 (p. 48)

People

““The media have gone berserk.”
“The media always go berserk. A kid falls off a bike in Montana, they’re all over it. Until something else happens.””

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 32 (p. 292)

“The queen of virtues is the recognition of one’s own flaws.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003), Chapter 33 (p. 349)

“The man was either foolish or fearless. Assuming there was a difference.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 10 (p. 139)

“Defend your opinion only if it can be shown to be true, not because it is your opinion.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003), Chapter 33 (p. 348)

“The kids were both adolescents, at that happy stage where they could simultaneously make him confident about the future while they were sabotaging the present.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 22 (p. 190)

Confidence , Future , Happiness

“Fiction is unlike reality because it has an end, a conclusion, which allows the characters to stroll happily, or perhaps simply more wisely, out through the climax into the epilogue. But life is a tapestry. It has no satisfactory end. There are simply periods of acceleration and delay, victory and frustration, seasoned with periodic jolts of reality.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 44 (p. 412)

Life , Reality , Victory , Season

“Gambini was addicted to asking the sort of ultimate questions about which one could speculate endlessly with no fear of ever arriving at a solution.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 2 (p. 19)

Fear , Question

“A man is entitled to only one great passion in a lifetime. Whether it’s music or a profession or a woman, everything else pales in its afterglow. The searing shock so changes one’s chemistry that if the object is lost, the experience can never be repeated. Only anticlimax remains.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 209)

Music , Passion , Change

“(He was) tall and lean, an aristocrat by inclination, born into money and influence and never recovered.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 41 (p. 391)

Money

“If you're right, and nobody really cares what’s out there, I wonder whether we’re even worth saving.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 4 (p. 36)

“Max was the exception. He had no taste for military life or for the prospect of getting shot at. His father, Colonel Maxwell E. Collingwood, USAF (retired), to his credit, tried to hide his disappointment in his only son. But it was there nonetheless, and Max had, on more than one occasion, overheard him wondering aloud to Max’s mother whether there was anything at all to genetics.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 2 (p. 17)

Life , Disappointment

“Yes, it was not journalism’s finest hour. But, MacAllister often argued, it never had been.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 24 (p. 222)

“How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top?”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 6 (p. 81)

“Technology is dangerous.”
“How do you mean?”
“It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 26 (p. 242)

“Of course, they (i. e., demons) had always been observed with some regularity, but that could usually be ascribed to an overabundance of piety or wine or imagination. Take your pick.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003), Chapter 45 (p. 439)

Imagination , Wine

“The uplifters are forever running around telling blockheads they would do better if they would believe in themselves. But they already do. That is why they are blockheads.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 29 (p. 262)

“One could not always put safety up front as the prime goal. Do that, and who would ever achieve anything of note?”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 14 (p. 191)

“There is no justice. There are occasional acts of vengeance, or regret, but there’s no real justice. In the natural scheme of things, it is not possible.”

Jack McDevitt

Epilogue (p. 421)
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006)

Justice , Nature

“Henry had been around long enough to know better than to disagree. But he forgot to implement.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 10 (p. 142)

“Ev was a careful man, a model of caution. He took pride in not committing to a view until all the facts were in. Which meant, of course, that he was never quite on board. Or in opposition.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 4 (p. 38)

“If you want creative and successful children, resign yourself to jousting with rebels.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 9 (p. 96)

Children , Success

“Faith is conviction without evidence, and sometimes even in the face of contrary evidence. In some quarters, this quality is perceived as a virtue.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 12 (p. 106)

Faith

“Technological civilizations don’t last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 27 (pp. 248-249)

Sense

“Mac continued to write scathing commentary on assorted hypocrisies in high places and low, without which hypocrisies, he cheerfully conceded, civilized life would be impossible.”

Jack McDevitt

Epilogue (p. 506)
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001)

Life

“So we have progressed to the point where we can move politicians around faster than light. I'm not sure I see the advantage.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 3 (p. 19)

Light

“He took particular delight in neutralizing those who desperately needed to be neutralized, those overblown, self-important, arrogant half-wits who were always running about dictating behavior, morals, and theology to everyone else. And he never looked back.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 11 (p. 180)

Behavior

“He’d grown a mustache since Randall had last seen him. It was hard to understand why: He looked devious enough without it.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 15 (p. 224)

Understanding

“And because she so desperately wanted it to be true, she knew she could not manage an objective judgment.”

Jack McDevitt book Time Travelers Never Die

Source: Time Travelers Never Die (2009), Chapter 19 (p. 195)

“New worlds are always hard on old ideas.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 33 (p. 367)

World , Idea

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