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Jack McDevitt Quotes
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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
Jack McDevitt: 125   quotes 3   likes

Jack McDevitt Quotes

“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)

People , Way

“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)

Truth

“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)

People , Truth , Search

“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)

Wisdom

“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)

People , School , Religion

“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)

Democracy

“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)

People

“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)

Women , Men , Intelligence , Support

“It’s all PR,” said Hutchins. “If we ever produced a person who was unrelentingly honest, everybody would want him dead.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 13 (p. 127)

Personality , Dead

“Never confuse perfection with production. People who don’t make mistakes aren’t doing anything.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 6 (p. 55)

People , Perfection

“Prudence, and experience, suggested she expect the worst.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003), Chapter 3 (p. 46)

“Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there’s a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don’t like it very much.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 33 (p. 296)

Truth

“Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.”

Jack McDevitt book Infinity Beach

Infinity Beach (2000)

Intelligence

“Organized mayhem,” Nick commented, “seems to be the chief preoccupation of intelligent species everywhere.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 31 (p. 432)

Intelligence

“The idiots always rose to the top and made policy.
It explained a lot of things.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 22 (p. 200)

“Faith has its price. When misfortune strikes the true believer, he assumes he has done something to deserve punishment, but isn’t quite certain what. The realist, recognizing that he lives in a Darwinian universe, is simply grateful to have made it to another sunset.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 10 (p. 165)

Faith , Universe

“Throughout our long and sorry history it has been men who supposed themselves to be exemplars of integrity who have done all the damage. Every crusade, whether for decent literary standards or to cover women’s bodies or to free the holy land, had been launched, endorsed, and enthusiastically perpetrated by men of character.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 6 (p. 94)

Women , Men , History

“It had occurred to Rimford, at about the time he approached fifty, that the chief drawback in contemplating the enormous gulfs of time and space that constitute the bricks and mortar of the cosmologist is that one acquires a dismaying perception of the handful of years allotted a human being.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 37)

Time

“But the old man had provided his kids with one priceless gift: He’d encouraged them to read, and he didn’t bother too much about the content, subscribing to the theory that good books ultimately speak for themselves.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 16 (p. 168)

Books , Reading

“We’re talking about something we all want very much to find. And that automatically makes Ed’s conclusions suspect.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 2 (p. 30)

“If some of the current politicians had been around a few thousand years ago,” she’d said, “we never would have gotten out of Africa. Boats cost too much.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 4 (pp. 46-47)

“During his sixty-odd years, he had found there were as many louts in the patrician classes as there were ignoramuses farther down the social spectrum.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 4 (p. 72)

“It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 18 (p. 166)

“The invention of the printing press probably marks the beginning of the decline of civilization. Once you have it, science follows close behind. Next thing you know the idiots have better weaponry. Then atom bombs. Meantime, social organization becomes increasingly dependent on technology, which becomes increasingly vulnerable to error or sabotage. If we can judge by our own experience, it looks as if you get the printing press, then about a thousand years. After that it’s back to the trees.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 27 (p. 243)

Error , Tree , Science , Dependency

“We can create the appearance of knowledge, the illusion of knowing how to grapple with a problem. Far too many educational systems have done exactly that. The result is generations of mouthpieces who can pour forth approved responses to programmed stimuli that contribute nothing to rational discussion. Dogma is for those who only wish to be comfortable. Catechisms are for cowards; commandments, for control freaks who have so little respect for their species that they are driven to appeal to a higher power to keep everyone in line.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 21 (p. 193)

Education , Knowledge , Problem , Appearance

“The reality is, we don’t want our kids to be smart. We want them to be like us. Only more so.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 4 (p. 37)

Reality

““It’s so old,” she said, “that, had life developed, it would be billions of years older than we are. Imagine what such a civilization might be like.”
Dead, thought MacAllister. That’s what it would be like. The fact that no technologically advanced species had been found in all these years made it pretty clear that the damned things have no staying power. You could see it at home, where, starting with the Cold War, there’d already been a few close calls.
It explained the Fermi Paradox. Nobody visits us because they blow themselves up before they get that far.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 27 (p. 248)

Life , War , Home , Imagination

“Tides are like politics. They come and go with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarely good news.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 22 (p. 323)

Change

“Cities have a social utility, if only as places to get away from.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 33 (p. 366)

“See what the world looks like from orbit. Well, in that way, at least, there was profit to be had. Nobody could look down at the planet, green and blue, with no borders in evidence and no sign of human habitation, and not get his perspective forever altered.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 16 (p. 142)

World , Way

“MacAllister wasn’t always right, but he was smart enough to know that. He was willing to change his mind when the evidence pointed in a different direction. That fact alone put MacAllister very nearly in a class by himself.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 24 (p. 220)

Change

“The only people he knew of who would have leveled material advantage so that no one had any were of course those who had none to start with.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 3 (p. 55)

People

“The impending collision out there somewhere in the great dark between a gas giant and a world very much like our own has some parallels to the eternal collision between religion and common sense. One is bloated and full of gas, and the other is measurable and solid. One engulfs everything around it, and the other simply provides a place to stand. One is a rogue destroyer that has come in out of the night, and the other is a warm well-lighted place vulnerable to the sainted mobs.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 1 (p. 15)

World , Religion , Sense , Light

“We are not a debating club,” Franklin said. “Our goal is to get at the truth, where that is possible.”

Jack McDevitt book Time Travelers Never Die

Source: Time Travelers Never Die (2009), Chapter 29 (p. 270)

Truth

“He was a decent enough guy, but he was always at his worst when he was trying to be sincere.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 3 (p. 24)

Guy , Sincerity

“It is not faith per se that creates the problem; it is conviction, the notion that one cannot be wrong, that opposing views are necessarily invalid and may even be intolerable.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 45 (p. 419)

Faith , Problem

“(He remarked) that anyone who truly wished to develop tolerance toward other human beings should start by casting aside any and all religious affiliation. When challenged by one of the other guests, he had asked innocently whether anyone could name a single person put to death or driven from his home by an atheist over theological matters.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 4 (pp. 72-73)

Death , Home , Personality

“I can’t imagine,” said Dupre, “a better way to unnerve people than to tell them there’s no cause for alarm.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 9 (p. 132)

People , Way , Imagination

“We know that when change comes, no one is more adamant in holding on to the past than those in power. They know change is inevitable, but they would, if they could, parcel it out in measured pieces. Grain for chickens.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 30 (p. 331)

Change , Past

“The Peacekeepers had a tradition that every problem had a solution. It was a nice slogan. Wasn’t true, but it sounded good.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 31 (p. 432)

Problem

“But, come to think of it, there was no need to wait. Time travelers don’t have to wait for anybody.”

Jack McDevitt book Time Travelers Never Die

Source: Time Travelers Never Die (2009), Chapter 5 (p. 50)

Travel , Thinking , Time , Waiting

“The creative act requires both will and intelligence. Breaking things is easy. You only need a hammer.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 41 (p. 383)

Intelligence

“Our generation faces only one danger, that we might say to ourselves this is not our problem, and that we will pass it off to the distant future. That we might shrug and say to ourselves that a thousand years is a long time. That we will become complacent and conclude that this problem will take care of itself.
But I say to you, we should take no satisfaction in the fact that we ourselves are in no physical danger. This is a hazard to our world, to everything we hope to pass on to future generations. And it is clear that we should act now, while we have the time.”

Jack McDevitt

Introduction
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003)

World , Hope , Problem , Distant

“The earliest religious feeling MacAllister could recall was being annoyed at Adam, because it was his fault that girls subsequently had to wear clothes.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 7 (p. 66)

Feeling , Girl , Clothes

“He would make a good manager, but he had a little too much integrity to survive in a top job.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 12 (p. 161)

“What people do with their leisure tells us a great deal about the nature of a society, what its values really are, for example, as opposed to what its members say its values are.”

Jack McDevitt book Infinity Beach

Source: Infinity Beach (2000), Chapter 32 (p. 476)

People , Nature

“Sheyel had always maintained that few actions are driven by reason. People act out of emotion, perception, prejudice. They will believe what they’ve always believed, filtering out all evidence to the contrary. Until they go too far and run onto the rocks of reality.”

Jack McDevitt book Infinity Beach

Source: Infinity Beach (2000), Chapter 23 (p. 357)

Reality , People

“There is, he’d said, an inverse correlation between the amount of power a person has and the level at which his or her mind functions. A person of ordinary intelligence who acquires power, of whatever kind, tends to develop an exaggerated view of his own capabilities. Sycophants gather. There is little or no criticism of decisions. As his ability to disrupt the lives of others advances, these tendencies become stronger. Eventually you end with Louis the Fourteenth, who thinks he’s done a good job for France, although the country he left behind was ruined.”

Jack McDevitt book Infinity Beach

Source: Infinity Beach (2000), Chapter 15 (p. 219)

Country , Personality , Intelligence , Thinking

“Never look for complexity in diplomatic decisions. With very few exceptions, actions always devolve—and that’s the exact term—from someone’s self-interest. Not the national self-interest, by the way. We are talking here about individual careers.”

Jack McDevitt book Infinity Beach

Source: Infinity Beach (2000), Chapter 15 (p. 218)

Way , Self-confidence , Decision