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A civilization has the ethics it can afford

Larry Niven

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Larry Niven
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: April 30
Author
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Laurence van Cott Niven
Afford
Ethics
Civilization

More quotes by Larry Niven

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The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim
Larry Niven
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My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.
Larry Niven
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The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.
Larry Niven
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There is no cause so good or noble that it will not attract fuggheads and the fuggheads will get all the press.
Larry Niven
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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
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Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all.
Larry Niven
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We learn only to ask more questions.
Larry Niven
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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
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I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.
Larry Niven
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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
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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
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In a collaboration, each author will do 75% of the work.
Larry Niven
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In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
Larry Niven
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Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
Larry Niven
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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
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If one must explain a magic trick, one should do so after the show is over.
Larry Niven
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Anything beats an expensive stack of paper.
Larry Niven
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I've got five or six unpublished stories kicking around looking for somebody to buy them.
Larry Niven
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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
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How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?
Larry Niven