Larry Niven famous quotes

The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation.
-- Larry Niven

#Book #Writing #Thinking

Ethics change with technology.
-- Larry Niven

#Technology #Ethics

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.
-- Larry Niven

#Decision #Leader #Mark

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
-- Larry Niven

#Imagination #World #Force

There were timelines branching and branching, a mega-universe of universes, millions more every minute. Billions? Trillions? The universe split every time someone made a decision. Split, so that every decision ever made could go both ways. Every choice made by every man, woman, and child was reversed in the universe next door.
-- Larry Niven

#Children #Men #Doors

Any damn fool can predict the past.
-- Larry Niven

#Past #Fool

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.
-- Larry Niven

#Writing #Stories #Novel

Once every hundred years, the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clean as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won't have to look at it.
-- Larry Niven

#Travel #Home #Night

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

#Writing #Ashamed #Embarrassed

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.
-- Larry Niven

#Intelligent #Suits #Environment

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

#Hate #Technology #Thinking

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!
-- Larry Niven

#Space #Insightful #Dinosaurs

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

#Intelligence #Doe #Leafs

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

#Running #May #Hindsight

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.
-- Larry Niven

#Boredom #Risk #Enemy

Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
-- Larry Niven

#Love #Dream #Daydreaming

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

#Technology #Space #Insane

There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the dominant life forms on Earth were obviously the cereals and other grasses. They occupied all the most desirable and fertile land; and they had tamed insects and animals to care for them. In particular, they had domesticated the bipeds to nurture and cultivate them and to save and plant their seed. Now, watching the farmers, Alex could easily imagine that they were worshiping and genuflecting before their masters.
-- Larry Niven

#Men #Animal #Land

A civilization has the ethics it can afford
-- Larry Niven

#Civilization #Ethics

Never tell a computer to forget it.
-- Larry Niven

#Computer #Forget #Forget It

The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum
-- Larry Niven

#Maximum #Universe

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

#Kicking #Stories #Six

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

I love superconductors.
-- Larry Niven

Treat your life like something to be sculpted.
-- Larry Niven

#Treats

Sometimes there's no point in giving up.
-- Larry Niven

#Giving Up #Giving #Sometimes

Fear is the brother of hate.
-- Larry Niven

#Brother #Fear #Hate

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.
-- Larry Niven

#Half #Unlearn

The Unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.
-- Larry Niven

#Awkward #Unexpected

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

#Dangerous

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

#Years #Names #Six

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

#War #Years #Cold

Stupidity is always a capital crime.
-- Larry Niven

#Stupidity #Crime

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

#People

We learn only to ask more questions.
-- Larry Niven

The majority is always sane.
-- Larry Niven

#Majority #Sane

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.
-- Larry Niven

#Psychics #Long #People

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

#Jesus #Technique #Ghost

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.
-- Larry Niven

#Love #Running #Comfort

Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes.
-- Larry Niven

#Book #Add #Bags

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

#Goal #Tools #Used

SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.
-- Larry Niven

#Cutting #One Direction #Way

I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.
-- Larry Niven

#Moon #Technique #Want

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

#Mistake #Alaska

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...
-- Larry Niven

#Thinking #Sea #Water

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

#Real #Useless

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

#Fighting #Causes #Hopeless

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.
-- Larry Niven

#War #People #Trying

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

#Maxims #Values

It's very difficult for a black man to get out of South-Central Los Angeles, and get out civilized....The only men I know who have escaped, all began reading Robert Heinlein at age ten.
-- Larry Niven

#Reading #Men #Black

There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.
-- Larry Niven

#Mistake #Character #Belief

It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.
-- Larry Niven

#Writing #Sin #Cardinals

Never fire a laser at a mirror.
-- Larry Niven

#Fire #Mirrors #Lasers

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

#Giving Up #Looks #Constant

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

#Mother #Fun #Care

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

#Writing #Stories #Mars

Anything beats an expensive stack of paper.
-- Larry Niven

#Paper #Beats

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

#Space #Political #Should

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

#Running #Believe #Surprise

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.
-- Larry Niven

#Father #Son #Advice

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

#Inspiration #Pops

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

#Education System

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

#People #Rational

I don't have a strong interest in history.
-- Larry Niven

#Strong #Interest

I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.
-- Larry Niven

#Fads #Privacy #Passing

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

#Art #Taught #Form

Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it; he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!
-- Larry Niven

#Long #Needs #Publicity

As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease.
-- Larry Niven

#Two #Childhood #Disease

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

#Fool #Protect #Capable