Larry Niven - Man Quotes

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There were organ banks all over the world, inadequately supplied by people kind enough to will their bodies to medical science.
How useful is the body of a man who dies of old age? How fast can you reach a car accident? And in 2043, Arkansas, which had never rescinded the death penalty, made the organ banks the official state method of execution.
The idea had spread like wildfire.... like a moral plague, as one critic of the time had put it.

Larry Niven
He was sick of having to be afraid. It was a situation to drive a man right out of his skull. If he stopped being afraid, even for an instant, he could be killed! But now, at least for the moment, he could stop listening for footsteps, stop trying to look in all directions at once. A sonic stunner was a surer bet than a hypothetical, undependable psi power. It was real, cold and hard in his hand.

Larry Niven
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
Never throw shit at an armed man. Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man.

Larry Niven
"I'm no historian," said Harry. "But morals are morals. What's unethical here and now is unethical anywhere, anytime."
"Kane, you're wrong. It is ethical to execute a man for theft?"
"Of course."
"Did you know that there was once a vastly detailed science of rehabilitation for criminals? It was a branch of psychology, naturally, but it was by far the largest such branch. By the middle of century twenty-one, nearly two-thirds of all criminals could eventually be released as cured."
"That's silly. Why go to all that trouble when the organ banks must have been crying for — Oh. I see. No organ banks."

Larry Niven