Larry Niven Quotes

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.

What’s intelligence for if not for seeking knowledge?

Isn’t the history of human interaction the conversion of neighbors into enemies? Or into nonhumans, that we might deprive them of said chattels, or life itself?

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.

"I'm no historian," said Harry. "But morals are morals. What's unethical here and now is unethical anywhere, anytime.
"Kane, you're wrong. It is ethical to execute a man for theft?"
"Of course."
"Did you know that there was once a vastly detailed science of rehabilitation for criminals? It was a branch of psychology, naturally, but it was by far the largest such branch. By the middle of century twenty-one, nearly two-thirds of all criminals could eventually be released as cured."
"That's silly. Why go to all that trouble when the organ banks must have been crying for — Oh. I see. No organ banks."

"What have they said to us?"
"I could translate, but it would be meaningless. They have welcomed us in the name of their Emperor, who appears to be an over-Master. The short, round one is Mediator to this Emperor."
"Ah. We have at last found one who can communicate. Speak to her."
"But he has said nothing!"
"Say nothing in return."

Sweet reason and solid judgment and philosophical resignation, these were not common among sorcerers.

We don’t break rules, but we bend the hell out of them.

The State has a superfluity of testicles, Peersa said with no particular emphasis.

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

Griffin shook his head. How could Millie be so cheerful every morning? He ought to steal a cup of her coffee and send it to R&D to be analyzed…

"Because she was designed human, before Nessus made her something else. Tanj him! Do you see what he did? He created god in his own image, his own idealized image, and he got Teela Brown. "She's just what any puppeteer would give his soul to be. She can't be injured. She can't even be uncomfortable, unless it's for her own benefit.

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

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

"Exercise is wonderful," said Louis. "I could sit and watch it all day."