Larry Niven Quotes
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SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.
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Stupidity is always a capital crime.
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I don't have a strong interest in history.
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Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it; he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!
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I have a kind of psychic invisibility. As long as I can stay scared, I can keep people from seeing me. That's what we have to count on.
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We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built.
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She waited for him to explain a universe in which there was so much injustice.
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I've spent a lot of my life among people brighter than myself.
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8) History never repeats itself.
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To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.
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As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease.
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19) Think before you make the coward's choice. Old age is not for sissies.
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Sometimes there’s no point in giving up.
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'It’s a nitwit idea.''Yes, sir.''Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you’ve got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.'
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Louis knew a few xenophobes, and regarded them as dolts.
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5) Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
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I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.
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3) Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don't.
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Forget the infinities: Concentrate on detail.
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Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with.
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Anyone who says human nature can’t be changed is out of his head. To make it stick, he’s got to define human nature-and he can’t.
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6) It is easier to destroy than create. Bin Laden tore down the World Trade Center? Let's see him build one. If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever.
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Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.
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Jesus Pietro wasn't used to dealing with ghosts. It would require brand new techniques. Grimly he set out to evolve them.