Jack McDevitt: Trending quotes

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Jack McDevitt: 250 quotes3 likes

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“New worlds are always hard on old ideas.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

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

“Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 38)

“Truth is slippery, not because it is difficult to grasp, but because we prefer our preconceptions, our beliefs, our myths.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 38 (p. 355)

“Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 10 (p. 85)

“The beginning of wisdom is to admit to being inept. We’re all a bit slow. We have our moments, but in the end, we have to resort to bumbling through. It is what makes conviction so egregious.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 40 (p. 376)

“Lasker mouthed, “Trust him,” and Max sighed. Trust a lawyer? It flew in the face of his most cherished principles.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 8 (p. 78)

““I'm not optimistic,” he said. “The issue clearly flies in the face of the First Amendment. People have a right to tell kids whatever they want about religion.”
“Do they have a right to push human sacrifice?”
“Of course not, Mac. But this isn’t human sacrifice. It’s just a church school.”
“I'm not sure the effect isn’t similar.””

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 34 (p. 314)

“MacAllister commented recently that Plato was right, that democracy is mob rule, that the voters can be counted on consistently to find the candidate with the fewest scruples and put him in office.”

Jack McDevitt

Epilogue (p. 423)
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006)

“Her experience had taught her that people who insisted on having others recognize their outstanding qualities usually didn’t have any.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 26 (p. 369)

“There’d been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 24 (p. 335)