Jack McDevitt: Trending quotes (page 3)

“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

“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)

Truth , Reality , Universe , 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)

“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)

People , Time , Night

“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)

“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)

Truth , Sadness , Freedom

“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)

“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)

Truth

“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)

“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)

People , Business

“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