Larry Niven Quotes Page 2

“Stupidity is always a capital crime.”

“Any damn fool can predict the past.”

“Ethics change with technology.”

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

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

“Never fire a laser at a mirror.”

“Fear is the brother of hate.”

“One mark of a good officer was the ability to make quick decisions. If they happen to be right, so much the better.”

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

“The majority is always sane.”

“The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.”

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

“We learn only to ask more questions.”

“The brightest minds in our field have been trying to find a definition of science fiction for these past seventy years. The short answer is, science fiction stories are given as possible, not necessarily here and now, but somewhere, sometime.”

“The unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.”

“I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Treat your life like something to be sculpted.”

“Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing.”

“Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.”

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

“Sometimes there's no point in giving up.”

“Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.”

“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.

One who marries six times in ten years won't change jobs. One who moves often to serve his company will maintain a stable marriage. A woman chained to one home and family may redecorate frantically or take a lover or go to many costume parties.”