Jack McDevitt famous quotes

The real problem has to do with the inability by people to admit that a position they've held a long time might be wrong. That's all. Not that it is. Just that it might be. I don't know why it is, but we tend to fall in love with things we believe, Threaten them, and you threaten us.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Falling In Love #Real #Believe

We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Stars #Heard

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

#Nice #Problem #Tradition

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

#Grateful #Sunset #Punishment

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

#Thinking #Waiting #Needs

If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Rocks #Data #Want

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

#Regret #Real #Justice

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

#Views #May #Problem

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

#Running #Believe #Forever

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

#Moving #Light #Politician

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

#Quality #Faces #Sometimes

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

#School #Thinking #Boys

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

#People #Want #Problem

If you're right, and nobody really cares what's out there, I wonder whether we're even worth saving.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Care #Saving #Wonder

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

#Teacher #Numbers #Nurse

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

#Blue #Perspective #Forever

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

#Mind #Attention #Rudy

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

#Watches #Television #Dave

If you want creative and successful children, resign yourself to jousting with rebels.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Children #Successful #Creative

Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Talking #People #Special

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

#Mean #People #Visibility

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

#Integrity #Loss #Cost

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 a good news.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Beach #Noise #Tides

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

#May #Reason #Wells

It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Weapons #Idiot

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

#People #Matter #Admire

Man has always seen himself the peak of creation. The part of the universe that thinks. The purpose for it all. It's no doubt a gratifying view, but the universe may have a different opinion.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Men #Thinking #Views

How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top?
-- Jack McDevitt

#Doe #Type

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

#Intelligent #Assuming #Individual

The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Unity #Essentials #Boards

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

#Sorry #Integrity #Character

So long as you believe in some truth you do not believe in yourself. You are a servant. A man of faith.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Believe #Men #Long

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

#Dream #People #Chasing

One could not always put safety up front as the prime goal. Do that, and who would ever achieve anything of note?
-- Jack McDevitt

#Safety #Goal #Achieve

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

#Intelligent #Men #Hands

The queen of virtues is the recognition of one's own flaws.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Queens #Recognition #Flaws

Somewhere we taught ourselves that our opinions are more significant than the facts. And somehow we get our egos and our opinions and Truth all mixed up in a single package, so that when something does challenge one of the notions to which we subscribe, we react as if it challenges us.
-- Jack McDevitt

#Ego #Challenges #Doe

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

#Wine #Imagination #Demon

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

#Running #School #Thinking

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

#Winning #Technology #Race