Top 15 Jack McDevitt Quotes

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

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

And because she so desperately wanted it to be true, she knew she could not manage an objective judgment.

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

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.

“How are you going to define ‘spiritual’?” asked Mona. No one had any idea.

The people who devised physical theory and constructed jump engines were not the same people who made political decisions, or who allowed themselves to be swept up by the current media craze, or to be ruled by centuries-old traditions that might once have served to hold nations together but now had become counterproductive.
Don’t assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.

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.

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.

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.

When she’d mentioned it to Matt, he had piously denied everything. Piety was always how you knew Matt was lying.

We are forever trying to sell science because somebody somewhere will get a better toothbrush," she grumbled. "Whatever happened to sheer curiosity?

Emily had not been trained as a scientist, so she tended to draw conclusions based on emotional need rather than on evidence.

Truth is like nudity: It is on occasion indispensable, but it is dangerous and should not be displayed openly. It is truth that gives life its grandeur, but the polite fictions that make it bearable.

He was a good salesman, which was to say he could look people directly in the eye while making the most preposterous claims.