Larry Niven Short Quotes

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

Larry Niven
Anarchy is the least stable of social structures.

Larry Niven
Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don't.

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

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

Larry Niven
Louis knew a few xenophobes, and regarded them as dolts.

Larry Niven
Writers who write for other writers should write letters.

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

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

Larry Niven
Think before you make the coward's choice. Old age is not for sissies.

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

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

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

Larry Niven
A machine has no mind to read; you never know when it's going to betray you—

Larry Niven
To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal.

Larry Niven
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum. The universe is hostile.

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

Larry Niven
Seen through the glow of a building orgasm, a woman seems to blaze with angelic glory.

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

Larry Niven
Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with.

Larry Niven
There is a time and place for tact.
And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.

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

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

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

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

Larry Niven
We've fallen way behind. Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

Larry Niven
Never be embarrassed or ashamed about anything you choose to write. (Think of this before you send it to a market)

Larry Niven
It does not destroy matter, which is reassuring. Rewriting one law of physics is worse than trying to eat one peanut.

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

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

Larry Niven