Larry Niven Quotes

American writer (born 1938)

Laurence van Cott Niven (born 30 April 1938) is an American science fiction author, most famous as the author of Ringworld (1970), his "Known Space" stories, and Niven's laws.

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Birth Name: Laurence van Cott Niven

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11) There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.

10) Anarchy is the least stable of social structures.

9) Ethics change with technology.

8) History never repeats itself.

7) Any damn fool can predict the past.

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.

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

4) Giving up freedom for security has begun to look naive. Even to me. Many of you were ahead of me on this — Three out of four hijacked airplanes destroyed the World Trade Center and a piece of the Pentagon in 2001. How is it possible that those planes were taken using only five perps armed with knives? It was possible because all those hundreds of passengers had been carefully stripped of every possible weapon. We may want to reconsider this approach. It doesn't work in high schools either.

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

2) Never fire a laser at a mirror.

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

Here is where the predictions failed: We didn't take Cargo Cult mentality into account: "if somebody has something I don't, he must have stolen it." We didn't understand how good we could get at communication — when you have something that someone else doesn't, the whole damn planet knows it.

Cheap superconductors imply maglev trains everywhere. Computers could get big again, with RAM/ROM rising by powers of forty and fifty, if superconductors shed the heat. Laser handguns against superconducting armor. I'm not predicting; I just love playing with superconductors.

We've fallen way behind. Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

The wealth of the universe is all over your head. We need to take command of the solar system to gain that wealth, and to escape the sea of paper our government is becoming, and for some decent chance of stopping a Dinosaur Killer asteroid.