Larry Niven Quotes
-
The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.
-
Louis knew a few xenophobes, and regarded them as dolts.
-
'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.'
-
19) Think before you make the coward's choice. Old age is not for sissies.
-
To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.
-
Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.
-
A machine has no mind to read; you never know when it’s going to betray you-
-
Treat your life like something to be sculpted.
-
In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.
-
It does not destroy matter, which is reassuring. Rewriting one law of physics is worse than trying to eat one peanut.
-
17) No technique works if it isn't used.
-
3) Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don't.
-
Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with.
-
The human species really could have faced global thermonuclear war. During seventy years of Cold War we grew used to it.
-
2) Never fire a laser at a mirror.
-
Think of it as evolution in action.
-
'You look like a girl with a secret,' Matt said. 'I think it must be the smile.' She moved closer to him, which was very close, and lowered her voice. 'Can you keep a secret?' Matt smiled with one side of his mouth to show that he knew what was coming. She said it anyway. 'So can I.'
-
Jesus Pietro was worried. The Sons of Earth, if they got this far, would go straight to the vivarium to free their compatriots. But if Matthew Keller was his own agent... If the ghost of Alpha Plateau was not a rebel, but a thing with its own unpredictable purpose... Jesus Pietro worried.
-
Putting a monkey wrench in machinery is often the only way to force somebody to repair, replace, or redesign the machinery. Especially legal or social machinery.
-
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum. The universe is hostile.
-
A thrint was master over every intelligent beast. This was the Powergiver’s primal decree, made before he made the stars. So said all of the twelve thrintun religions, though they fought insanely over other matters.
-
6) Everybody talks first draft.
-
It had been a long dull evening, with only the thought of leaving the party early to look forward to.
-
10) Anarchy is the least stable of social structures.