Larry Niven
168 quotes
Biography
"Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun."
"Never fire a laser at a mirror."
"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers … What they really hate are lousy programmers."
"Think of it as evolution in action."
"God was knocking, and he wanted in bad."
"Everything starts as somebody's daydream."
"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!"
"Part of being a coward is wanting security."
"Do you know what it’s like to be suddenly poor and not know how to live poor?"
"There is no turning away from knowledge."
"The moral of this story is, anything you don’t understand is dangerous until you do understand it."
"I didn’t want to find her. Not now. Our bargain had been clear, and also inevitable; and there are advantages to sleeping alone. I’ll think of them in a moment."
"Just take my word for it, will you? Assume I’m a genius."
"Was he deadpan because he didn’t care anymore? How much boredom can you meet in three hundred years?"
"Any time seems long when you need to make a decision but can’t."
"There’s always another problem behind the one you just solved. Does that mean that you should stop solving problems?"
"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."
"Talking to the Council would be like shouting obscenities at a forest fire."
"The trouble with sharing too many beds was that one’s chance of running into a really bad situation was improved almost to certainty."
"I had to grin. Morris was shocked and horrified. I’d shown him a brand new sin."
"A species that can’t develop spaceflight is no better than animals."
"When you trade among the stars, there is no repeat business."
"Stupidity is always a capital crime."
"The morning was blacker than the inside of a smoker’s lungs."
"There was this about him: he knew who I was, but he hadn’t remembered my name. Ron Cole had better things to think about than what name belonged with whom. A name was only a tag and a conversational gambit."