Larry Niven Quotes

I need exercise and solitude. This time of confinement has threatened my sanity!

You don’t stop planning just because there’s no hope.

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.

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

In fantasy, more than in other forms of literature, the obligation is to teach something universally true about the human condition.

A species that can’t develop spaceflight is no better than animals.

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

Our society depends entirely on its technology. Change the technology, and you change the society. Most especially you change the ethics.

There’s always another problem behind the one you just solved. Does that mean that you should stop solving problems?

War between the sexes had always seemed silly to Corbell. Too much fraternizing with the enemy, ha-ha.

"Johnny, did you ever hear of the Club of Rome?" Johnny had, but the audience would need reminding. "They were the people who did computer simulations to find out how long we could get along on our natural resources. Even with zero population growth — " "They tell us we're finished," Sharps broke in. "And that's stupid. We're only finished because they won't let us really use technology. They say we're running out of metals. There's more metal in one little asteroid than was mined all over the world in the last five years! And there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids. All we have to do is go get 'em." "Can we?" "You bet! Even with the technology we already have, we could do it. Johnny, out there in space it's raining soup, and we don't even know about soup bowls."

Allen, it puzzles me that a man can shoot thirty-two full-grown men and women before the sheriff’s men gun him down. You’re more his time, maybe you can tell me. Why didn’t someone just shoot the son of a bitch?

Cooking was creation itself; It seemed to put the universe in perspective.

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

He liked everything about the university except the students.