Top 60 Jack McDevitt Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.”

— Jack McDevitt

2. “The secret to a successful career in virtually any field is good public relations. Forget results. Forget the facts. Perception is all that matters.”

— Jack McDevitt

3. “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

4. “Drink deep the cup of life; take it’s dark wine into your soul. For it passes round the table only once.”

— Jack McDevitt

5. “Sometimes the cost of integrity is the loss of a friend.”

— Jack McDevitt

6. “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

7. “Intelligence is like pornography. I can’t define it, but I know if when I see it.”

— Jack McDevitt

8. “The measure of a civilization is in the courage, not of its soldiers, but of its bystanders.”

— Jack McDevitt

9. “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

11. “Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The real guilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while 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

12. “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

13. “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

14. “Boundaries have no existence save on charts or in small minds. Nature does not draw lines.”

— Jack McDevitt

15. “If you’re right, and nobody really cares what’s out there, I wonder whether we’re even worth saving.”

— Jack McDevitt

16. “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

17. “Courage is perhaps our most admirable trait. The man, or woman, who possesses it is able to plunge ahead, despite dangers, despite warnings, despite hazards of all kinds, to attack the task at hand. Often, it is indistinguishable from stupidity.”

— Jack McDevitt

18. “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

19. “People tend to believe that good fortune consists of equal parts talent, hard work, and sheer luck. It’s hard to deny the roles of the latter two. As to talent, I would only say it consists primarily in finding the right moment to step in.”

— Jack McDevitt

20. “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

21. “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

22. “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

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

— Jack McDevitt

24. “Certain types of decisions can be safely ignored. Some issues will go away with the passage of time, others will be so slow developing that the decision-makers will depart before the results of their neglect becomes manifest. Which brings us to the environment.”

— Jack McDevitt

25. “The term congressional hearing is an oxymoron. No congressional hearing is ever called to gather information. Rather, it is an exercise designed strictly for posturing, by people who have already made up their minds, looking for ammunition to support their positions.”

— Jack McDevitt

26. “Solitude is only a good idea if you have the right people along to share it.”

— Jack McDevitt

27. “If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.”

— Jack McDevitt

28. “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

29. “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, 1816.”

— Jack McDevitt

30. “If you want creative and successful children, resign yourself to jousting with rebels.”

— Jack McDevitt

31. “Life is a walk in the fog. Most people don’t know that. They’re fooled by the sunlight into thinking they can see what’s ahead. But it’s the reason they are forever getting lost or falling into ditches or committing matrimony.”

— Jack McDevitt

32. “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

33. “The vast majority of us are far more capable than we realize. We grow up with parents, teachers, bosses all telling us what we can’t do. Don’t touch it; you’ll break it. They mean well, but they leave us with a sense of our own incapacity. When the day comes, if it comes, that you begin to believe in yourself, the world will be yours. – Mara.”

— Jack McDevitt

34. “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

35. “So long as you believe in some truth you do not believe in yourself. You are a servant. A man of faith.”

— Jack McDevitt

36. “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

37. “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

38. “We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.”

— Jack McDevitt

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

— Jack McDevitt

40. “The queen of virtues is the recognition of one’s own flaws.”

— Jack McDevitt

41. “How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top?”

— Jack McDevitt

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

— Jack McDevitt

43. “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

44. “And never forget,” Michael said, “time travelers never die. No matter what you saw up ahead, about me, I’ll always be here.”

— Jack McDevitt

45. “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

46. “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

47. “Superman and Batman got their start, we think, during the twenty-fourth century. Except for a brief period during the Dark Age, they’ve never gone away.”

— Jack McDevitt

48. “A friend is a second self.”

— Jack McDevitt

49. “Few people achieve greatness. One reason is that the opportunity, for the vast majority of us, never even shows up. Another is that if it does, it will inevitably look like a long shot. And the temptation invariably is to play it safe.”

— Jack McDevitt

50. “There’s not much to be said for sightseeing. You go somewhere that has a waterfall. You have a beer, watch the water go over the edge, and move on. Tours are all the same. In the end, the only thing that matters is the beer.”

— Jack McDevitt