Jack McDevitt: Quotes about people

“Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.”

Jack McDevitt

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 30 (p. 398)

People

“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

“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

“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

““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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

People , Problem , Change

“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

“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

““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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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