Jack McDevitt: Trending quotes (page 2)

“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)

““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)

People , Business

“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

Truth , Faith

“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