Larry Niven Quotes

Ethics change with technology.

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.

The human species really could have faced global thermonuclear war. During seventy years of Cold War we grew used to it.

Everything starts as somebody's daydream.

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

We learn only to ask more questions.

It's very difficult for a black man to get out of South-Central Los Angeles, and get out civilized....The only men I know who have escaped, all began reading Robert Heinlein at age ten.

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.

The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

I've got five or six unpublished stories kicking around looking for somebody to buy them.

There is no cause so good or noble that it will not attract fuggheads; and the fuggheads will get all the press.

I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.

I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.

Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.

Sometimes there's no point in giving up.

The best advice I was ever given was on my twenty-first birthday when my father said, Son, here's a million dollars. Don't lose it.

Boredom is my worst enemy. It's killed a lot of my friends, but it won't get me. When I get bored, I go risk my life somewhere.

In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.

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.

Love was a delicious blend of warm and cold. There was comfort in making love. It solved no problems: but one could run away from problems.

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.

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!

My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.

Anything beats an expensive stack of paper.

The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant (F X S = k). Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naive.

And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.

I don't have a strong interest in history.

That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.

Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently.

Never fire a laser at a mirror.

Fear is the brother of hate.

Any damn fool can predict the past.

How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?

There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.

In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.

If one must explain a magic trick, one should do so after the show is over.

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.

Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.

Never tell a computer to forget it.

The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim

We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built.

I've spent a lot of my life among people brighter than myself.

I do not believe they've run out of surprises.

I never got good at predicting what millions of people will suddenly decide is rational.

I'd repair our education system or replace it with something that works.

I love superconductors.