Larry Niven Quotes

Sometimes there’s no point in giving up.

I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius - one Earth orbit - around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base.

And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges.

Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding.

Never tell a computer to forget it.

Engineers. You had to love them. (The alternative was strangling them, and he didn’t want that catching on.)

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

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.

“Does it help you to know that you’ve ruined my day?”
“It does, yes.”

Any story that needs a critic to explain it, needs rewriting. A lucidly written, easily understood book is likely to escape critical attention.

"They used to teach us that evolution of intelligent beings wasn't possible," she said. "Societies protect their weaker members. Civilizations tend to make wheel chairs and spectacles and hearing aids as soon as they have the tools for them. When a society makes war, the men generally have to pass a fitness test before they're allowed, to risk their lives. I suppose it helps win the war." She smiled. "But it leaves precious little room for the survival of the fittest."

For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt.

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!

It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.

Time is a one-way street with no parking spaces. You just have to keep going.

"Rick laughed. "Yeah. Everybody's gonna start painting their borders in neon orange a mile wide. Then all the college kids will scream about damage to the environment

The majority is always sane