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Larry Niven
216 quotes
“You don’t stop planning just because there’s no hope.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Collaborations are unnatural. The writer is a jealous god. He builds his universe without interference. He resents the carping of mentally deficient critics, and the editor’s capricious demands for revisions. Let two writers try to make one universe, and their defenses get in the way.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There aren’t many prizes for second place in battle.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Government over large areas needs emotional ties. It also needs stability. Government by 50%-plus-one hasn’t enjoyed particularly stable politics—and it lasts only so long as the 50%-minus-one minority is willing to submit. Is heredity a rational way to choose leaders? It has this in its favor: the leader is known from an early age to be destined to rule, and can be educated to the job. Is that preferable to education based on how to get the job? Are elected officials better at governing, or at winning elections?”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Heinlein spun off ideas at a terrific rate. Other writers picked them up…along with a distrust for arrogance combined with stupidity or ignorance, particularly in politicians.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A sapient species doesn’t reach space unless the members learn to cooperate. They’ll wreck the environment, one way or another, war or straight libertarianism or overbreeding.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Infantry, which means killing on foot and doesn’t have anything to do with children.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It doesn’t take brains to mate!”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you know the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel? If you try to read a graphic novel in the sauna, it comes apart. Glue melts; staples don’t.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ll try anything that improves my education and is fun at the time.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any story that needs a critic to explain it, needs rewriting. A lucidly written, easily understood book is likely to escape critical attention.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many critics avoid science fiction and fantasy as demons avoid holy water. And why not? A science fiction work that needs explaining may or may not be trash, but the standard-issue critic is not likely to know the difference, and not likely to be able to explain it either.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The standard-issue critic took English lit because physics was too hard for him!”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not want all critics hanged alongside the lawyers and tax collectors. The good ones serve a purpose.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once you know about critics, you know about literature. Literature is whatever survives the critics.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The test of time has at least the virtue of being unambiguous.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jovan knew about luck. Like wine: when luck turns sour, the whole barrel is sour.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s damned embarrassing when you wake up with a girl and can’t remember her name.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“New technologies create new customs, new laws, new ethics, new crimes.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness is beautiful, all by itself. A happy person is beautiful, per se.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So he was a little more callous than the rest of the world’s billions. But not much. Every voter had a bit of the organlegger in him. In voting the death penalty for so many crimes, the law makers had only bent to pressure from the voters. There was a spreading lack of respect for life, the evil side of transplant technology. The good side was a longer life for everyone. One condemned criminal could save a dozen deserving lives. Who could complain about that?”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I see that you will never agree. I cannot help that. I can only read the evidence.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You question my dispassionate judgment? Men have died for less!”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I thought about it and got cold chills. Assassination is already a recognized branch of politics. If this got out—But that was the trouble; someone seemed to have thought of it already. If not, someone would. Someone always did.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chickens fly very well in low gravity.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You should know by now, Hamilton. We bury everything. The sky is the enemy here. There’s meteors, radiation..spacecraft, for that matter.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When nobody gets rich, they call that a recession.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A machine has no mind to read; you never know when it’s going to betray you—”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It does not destroy matter, which is reassuring. Rewriting one law of physics is worse than trying to eat one peanut.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A ramrobot had been the first to see Mount Lookitthat. Ramrobots had been first visitors to all the settled worlds. The interstellar ramscoop robots, with an unrestricted fuel supply culled from interstellar hydrogen, could travel between stars at speeds approaching that of light.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Matthew Leigh 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.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The medical revolution that began with the beginning of the twentieth century had warped all human society for five hundred years. America had adjusted to Eli Whitney's cotton gin in less than half that time. As with the gin, the effects would never quite die out. But already society was swinging back to what had once been normal. Slowly; but there was motion. In Brazil a small but growing alliance agitated for the removal of the death penalty for habitual traffic offenders. They would be opposed, but they would win.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With all its horrors and all its failures, life was bearable where there were hot showers.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were organ banks all over the world, inadequately supplied by people kind enough to will their bodies to medical science. How useful is the body of a man who dies of old age? How fast can you reach a car accident? And in 2043, Arkansas, which had never rescinded the death penalty, made the organ banks the official state method of execution. The idea had spread like wildfire...like a moral plague, as one critic of the time had put it.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Geoffrey Eustace Parlette had evidently imitated ancient bad taste in hopes of getting something new and different.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus Pietro wasn't used to dealing with ghosts. It would require brand new techniques. Grimly he set out to evolve them.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was shaking. A mass verbal attack can do that to a man, can smash his self-respect and set up doubts which remain for hours or days or forever. There are well-developed verbal techniques for many to use against one. You never let the victim speak without interruption; never let him finish a sentence. You interrupt each other so that he can’t quite catch the drift of your arguments, and then he can’t find the flaws. He forgets his rebuttal points because he’s not allowed to put them into words. His only defense is to walk out. If, instead, you throw him out…”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our society depends entirely on its technology. Change the technology, and you change the society. Most especially you change the ethics.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Parlette, if you have something to say, say it. If we jump to the wrong conclusions, please assume that you’re expressing yourself badly, and don’t try to shift the blame.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Parlette spoke slowly and evenly. "I am trying to prevent a bloodbath. Is that clear enough for you? I'm trying to prevent a civil war that could kill half the people in this world.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He kept the gun in his hand. It felt good. He was sick of having to be afraid. It was a situation to drive a man right out of his skull. If he stopped being afraid, even for an instant, he could be killed! But now, at least for the moment, he could stop listening for footsteps, stop trying to look in all directions at once. A sonic stunner was a surer bet than a hypothetical, undependable psi power. It was real, cold and hard in his hand.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t doubt you’re serious,” he said wonderingly. “What I doubt is your sanity.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Louis knew a few xenophobes, and regarded them as dolts.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fear is the brother of hate.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source