Larry Niven

We learn only to ask more questions.

— Larry Niven

“The luck of Teela Brown.”

— Larry Niven

Stupidity is always a capital crime.

— Larry Niven

“The majority is always sane”

— Larry Niven

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.

— Larry Niven

“The hammer has fallen.”

— Larry Niven

Never fire a laser at a mirror.

— Larry Niven

Any damn fool can predict the past.

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

The Unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

“have precious little free will," he was saying. "We're too intelligent not to see the right answers.”

— Larry Niven

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…

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

I am trying to prevent a bloodbath. Is that clear enough for you? I'm trying to prevent a civil war that could…

— Larry Niven

“Some amiably deranged science-fiction writer had come up with it forty years back and, like so many of his kind, given it…

— Larry Niven

“Dune; Nova; Double Star; The Corridors of Time; Cat's Cradle; Half Past Human; Murder in Retrospect; Gideon's Day; The Red Right Hand;…

— Larry Niven

“There were the meaningless greetings the humans called "formalities": insincere inquiries into the state of health, nebulous benedictions and hopes for past…

— Larry Niven

As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds…

— Larry Niven

We need to take command of the solar system to gain that wealth, and to escape the sea of paper our government…

— Larry Niven

The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed,…

— Larry Niven

“For two hundred and fifty years the kzinti had not attacked human space. They had nothing to attack with. For two hundred…

— Larry Niven

“I'll have to get over this sooner or later, Louis thought. Why not now? A friend had taught him this cantrip, this…

— Larry Niven

I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language;…

— Larry Niven

“I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -…

— Larry Niven

There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the…

— Larry Niven

“Long ago, Louis Wu had stood at the void edge of Mount Lookitthat. The Long Fall River, on that world, ends in…

— Larry Niven

For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability,…

— Larry Niven

“They used to teach us that evolution of intelligent beings wasn't possible," she said. "Societies protect their weaker members. Civilizations tend to…

— Larry Niven

I don't have a strong interest in history.

— Larry Niven

It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.

— Larry Niven

I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.

— Larry Niven