Larry Niven Quotes

Infantry, which means killing on foot and doesn’t have anything to do with children.

We encounter few Citizens or humans in this region. We were surprised to receive your hail. Did you have difficulty finding us?

Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes.

Avalon was neutral. The children of Earth might die, they might thrive. Avalon would embrace their bones or the progeny with equal warmth.

Geoffrey Eustace Parlette had evidently imitated ancient bad taste in hopes of getting something new and different.

“I couldn’t sit here and tell you that I’m sorry it happened.”
“Even with the death…?”
“Everybody dies. The obstetrician slaps you on the ass with one hand and hands you a postdated death certificate with the other. What’s important is that our children have a better chance. It’s always been about the children. Always. Women have never loved being kept from education and treated as second-class citizens. Men have never enjoyed having their balls shot off in wars. Men and women didn’t fall into their roles accidentally, and each side doesn’t hate the other. It happened because for a thousand generations, that was the best way we knew to build a civilization, to build a better future for our children. The industrial revolution doomed slavery—racial, sexual, social. Civilization is worth fighting for.”

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.

Do you know what it’s like to be suddenly poor and not know how to live poor?

The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of cause.

Everybody was talking and nobody was communicating.

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.

19) Think before you make the coward's choice. Old age is not for sissies.

"1. a.Never throw shit at an armed man.
b.Never stand next to someone who
is throwing shit at an armed man.

2.Never fire a laser at a mirror.
3.Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.
4.F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa.
5.Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
6.It is easier to destroy than create.
7.Any damn fool can predict the past.
8.History never repeats itself.
9.Ethics change with technology.
10.There Ain't No Justice. (often abbreviated to TANJ)
11.Anarchy is the least stable of social structures. It falls apart at a touch.
12.There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.
13.The ways of being human are bounded but infinite.
14.The world's dullest subjects, in order:
a.Somebody else's diet.
b.How to make money for a worthy cause.
c.The Kardashians.

15.The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.
Niven's corollary: The gene-tampered turkey you're talking to isn't necessarily one of them.
16.Fuzzy Pink Niven's Law: Never waste calories.
17.There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
in variant form in Fallen Angels as "Niven's Law: No cause is so noble that it won't attract fuggheads."
18.No technique works if it isn't used.
19.Not responsible for advice not taken.
20.Old age is not for sissies."

Are you bringing antimatter to Hearth? You play with star-fire energies as casually as you put edges on furniture!

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.