Jack McDevitt Quotes

117 Sourced Quotes

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

Jack McDevitt
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
Ah, Lord, if I doubt You, it is perhaps because You hide Yourself so well.

Jack McDevitt
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
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
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
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
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
Technology is dangerous.
How do you mean?
It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots.

Jack McDevitt
But, come to think of it, there was no need to wait. Time travelers don't have to wait for anybody.

Jack McDevitt
I suspect we would be wise, he said without looking up, to avoid declaring what God will or will not allow.

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

Jack McDevitt
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
Sometimes the cost of integrity is the loss of a friend.

Jack McDevitt
An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line.

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

Jack McDevitt
Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.

Jack McDevitt
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
Secrecy is a compulsive reflex in this country. It strangles thought, delays scientific progress, and destroys integrity.

Jack McDevitt
If you're paying attention to your wardrobe, Rudy believed, your mind isn't sufficiently occupied.

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

Jack McDevitt
We're talking about something we all want very much to find. And that automatically makes Ed's conclusions suspect.

Jack McDevitt
There are few professions whose primary objective is to advance the cause of humanity rather than simply to make money or accrue power. Among this limited group of humanitarians I would number teachers, nurses, bookstore owners, and bartenders.

Jack McDevitt
Katie commented that Americans had lost the ability to enjoy themselves.
We watch television, Dave said.

Jack McDevitt
I can't imagine, said Dupre, a better way to unnerve people than to tell them there's no cause for alarm.

Jack McDevitt
One should always be skeptical. That's always been our problem. We have too many believers.
Believers in what?
In everything.

Jack McDevitt
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