Jack McDevitt: Doing

“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)

Love , Life , Soul

“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)

Life , People , Dreams

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“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)

“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)

God , People , History , Star

““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

“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

“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