Larry Niven quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Larry Niven

Larry Niven Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Larry Niven on Wise Famous Quotes.

Never be embarrassed or ashamed by anything you choose to write.

Everything starts as somebody's dream.

I've spent a lot of my life among people brighter than myself.

The luck of Teela Brown.

Treat your life like something to be sculpted.

My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.

In a collaboration, each author will do 75% of the work.

The Unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.

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

The witnessing of titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.

The hammer has fallen.

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

The best advice I was ever given was on my twenty-first birthday when my father said, Son, here's a million dollars. Don't lose it.

If one must explain a magic trick, one should do so after the show is over.

Humans," said the puppeteer, "should not be allowed to run loose. You will surely harm yourselves.

Boredom is my worst enemy. It's killed a lot of my friends, but it won't get me. When I get bored, I go risk my life somewhere.

Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently.

Cliff shrugged. None of their ideas sounded

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

Heat is produced as a waste product of civilization." "I

Anything you don't understand is dangerous until you do understand it.

And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.

In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile." "But

Love was a delicious blend of warm and cold. There was comfort in making love. It solved no problems: but one could run away from problems.

The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant (F X S = k). Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naive.

The majority is always sane

How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?

The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in. - Robert A. Heinlein

The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum

Nessus sprawled bonelessly in his couch. He looked ridiculously, ludicrously comfortable.

But you've never even been as far as the Moon.

Sometimes the only way to call attention to bad construction was to set fire to the building.

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

Anything beats an expensive stack of paper.

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

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

Anything that can go wrong, will

A civilization has the ethics it can afford

The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim

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

I have a kind of psychic invisibility. As long as I can stay scared, I can keep people from seeing me. That's what we have to count on.

If you can heat some bourbon, I can drink it," said the kzin. "If you cannot heat it, I can still drink it." "Nessus?

I asked him, "Do you know the difference between nude and naked?"
He shook his head.
"Nude is artistic. Naked is defenseless.

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

It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.

Stupidity is always a capital crime.

Any damn fool can predict the past.

There is no cause so good or noble that it will not attract fuggheads; and the fuggheads will get all the press.

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

I do not believe they've run out of surprises.

We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built.

We learn only to ask more questions.

Never tell a computer to forget it.

We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes.

Everything starts as somebody's daydream.

Why hadn't they built a lot of little Ringworlds instead?

I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.

I'd repair our education system or replace it with something that works.

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

But ... watching Steven Barnes taught me to treat my life like an art form.

I've got five or six unpublished stories kicking around looking for somebody to buy them.

Jesus Pietro wasn't used to dealing with ghosts. It would require brand new techniques. Grimly he set out to evolve them.

I love superconductors.

In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.

In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.

I don't have a strong interest in history.

The puppeteer unrolled completely. 'Did I hear you call me cute?

Fear is the brother of hate. One

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

I see war as that insane enterprise wherein men dig up the riches of the earth and hurl them at one another. - ATTRIBUTED TO JOSEPH DANIEL HARRINGTON

The human species really could have faced global thermonuclear war. During seventy years of Cold War we grew used to it.

Meet Crazy Eddie

I'm not predicting; I just love playing with superconductors.

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

I never got good at predicting what millions of people will suddenly decide is rational.

Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all.

I am trying to prevent a bloodbath. Is that clear enough for you? I'm trying to prevent a civil war that could kill half the people in this world.

Louis suggested that the ship be called 'Lying Bastard'. For their own reasons, Teela and Speaker agreed. For his own reason, Nessus did not object.

Music had played suddenly through the cabin, complex and lovely, rich in minor tones, like the sad call of a sex-maddened computer. Nessus whistled.

Fear is the brother of hate.

Never fire a laser at a mirror.

Ethics change with technology.