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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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Larry Niven
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: April 30
Author
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Laurence van Cott Niven
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Idiot
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More quotes by Larry Niven

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Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
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Stupidity is always a capital crime.
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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We learn only to ask more questions.
Larry Niven
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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
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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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A civilization has the ethics it can afford
Larry Niven
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The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant (F X S = k). Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naive.
Larry Niven
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We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built.
Larry Niven
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How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?
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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I've got five or six unpublished stories kicking around looking for somebody to buy them.
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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The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim
Larry Niven
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I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.
Larry Niven
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I'm not predicting I just love playing with superconductors.
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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I don't have a strong interest in history.
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