Top 100 Larry Niven Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.”

— Larry Niven

Featured in: Space Quotes

2. “Anything that can go wrong, will.”

— Larry Niven

3. “Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.”

— Larry Niven

4. “Everything starts as somebody’s daydream.”

— Larry Niven

5. “Ethics change with technology.”

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

7. “We learn only to ask more questions.”

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

9. “A civilization has the ethics it can afford.”

— Larry Niven

10. “That’s the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.”

— Larry Niven

11. “The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim.”

— Larry Niven

12. “In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.”

— Larry Niven

13. “To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

16. “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

17. “Anything you don’t understand is dangerous until you do understand it.”

— Larry Niven

18. “Humans,” said the puppeteer, “should not be allowed to run loose. You will surely harm yourselves.”

— Larry Niven

19. “Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you’ve got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.”

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

Featured in: Intelligence Quotes

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

— Larry Niven

22. “Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.”

— Larry Niven

23. “Once Louis Wu had sworn to live forever.”

— Larry Niven

24. “Never fire a laser at a mirror.”

— Larry Niven

25. “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

26. “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

27. “Never tell a computer to forget it.”

— Larry Niven

28. “I love superconductors.”

— Larry Niven

29. “Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile.” “But.”

— Larry Niven

30. “We’re in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism.”

— Larry Niven

31. “Fear is the brother of hate.”

— Larry Niven

32. “Exercise is wonderful,” said Louis. “I could sit and watch it all day.”

— Larry Niven

33. “The State has a superfluity of testicles, Peersa said with no particular emphasis.”

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

35. “The Unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.”

— Larry Niven

36. “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

37. “The air smelled of ozone and puppeteers.”

— Larry Niven

38. “The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care.”

— Larry Niven

39. “On a world built to ordered specification, there was no logical reason for such a mountain to exist. Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain.”

— Larry Niven

40. “We play your part in order to understand you, but you each seem to play a thousand parts. It makes things difficult for an honest, hard-working bug-eyed monster.”

— Larry Niven

41. “He felt brittle, and ravenous.”

— Larry Niven

42. “They do not use lasers, they do not use radio, they do not use hyperwave. What are they using for communication? Telepathy? Written messages? Big mirrors?” “Parrots,” Louis suggested. He got up to join them at the door to the control room. “Huge parrots, specially bred for their oversized lungs. They’re too big to fly. They just sit on hilltops and scream at each other.”

— Larry Niven

43. “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

44. “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

45. “Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all.”

— Larry Niven

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

— Larry Niven

47. “The majority is always sane.”

— Larry Niven

48. “Any damn fool can predict the past.”

— Larry Niven

49. “Sometimes there’s no point in giving up.”

— Larry Niven

50. “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