Larry Niven Quotes
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The majority is always sane.
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Matthew Leiah Keller sat beneath a watershed tree and brooded. Other children played all around him, but they ignored Matt. So did two teachers on monitor duty. People usually ignored Matt when he wanted to be alone. Uncle Matt was gone. Gone to a fate so horrible that the adults wouldn't even talk about it.
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The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum. The universe is hostile.
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'Do you play games of chance?''Emphatically yes. The process of living is a game of chance. To avoid chance is insanity.'
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'Perhaps I was expecting too much.''Perhaps. We’re all waiting as fast as we can.'
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10) Anarchy is the least stable of social structures.
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1a) Never throw shit at an armed man. 1b) Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man.
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One mark of a good officer, he remembered, was the ability to make quick decisions. If they happen to be right, so much the better.
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Rod privately suspected the Scots studied their speech off duty so they’d be unintelligible to the rest of humanity.
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Drugs: 'There’s no way to keep them from getting in. Anyone who wants drugs can get them. We make arrests where we can, and so what? Me, I’m betting on Darwin.''How do you mean?''The next generation won’t use drugs because they’ll be descended from people who had better sense.'
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The Unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.
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1) Writers who write for other writers should write letters.
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11) There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.
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I sometimes wonder why the aristocracy isn’t extinct, the lot of you seem so stupid sometimes.
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The morning was blacker than the inside of a smoker’s lungs.
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Seen through the glow of a building orgasm, a woman seems to blaze with angelic glory.
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The bleeding-heart symbol does not represent any known revolutionary organization. … Yes, the bleeding heart was something else again. A gruesome symbol on a vivarium floor. Fingers that broke without their owner noticing. An ink drawing appearing from nowhere on a dossier cover, like a signature. A signature.
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'That’s impossible. Isn’t it? Carlos?'Carlos’ mouth twisted. 'Not if it’s being done.'
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7) Any damn fool can predict the past.
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He liked everything about the university except the students.
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2) Never be embarrased or ashamed about anything you choose to write. (Think of this before you send it to a market)
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In a universe the size of ours almost anything that can happen, will.
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Here is where the predictions failed: We didn't take Cargo Cult mentality into account: 'if somebody has something I don't, he must have stolen it.' We didn't understand how good we could get at communication - when you have something that someone else doesn't, the whole damn planet knows it.
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4) It is a sin to waste the reader's time.