Quotes from Larry Niven

He was sure now. Teela Brown had never been hurt; had never learned caution; did not understand fear. Her first pain would come as a horrifying surprise. It might destroy her entirely. The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. She'd be hurt over Louis Wu's dead body.

Chaplain Hardy handed him the silver pail and asperger, a wand with a hollow ball at the end.

Meet Crazy Eddie

If you can heat some bourbon, I can drink it, said the kzin. If you cannot heat it, I can still drink it. Nessus?

Nothing lasts. You can't do any one thing for two hundred years. A marriage, a career, a hobby—they're good for twenty years, and maybe you go through a phase more than once. I did some experimental medicine. I wrote a big chunk of that documentary on the Trinoc culture that won a—

And Maureen and Charlotte would stand guard if Al didn't, and to hell with that. The only good thing about Hammerfall, women's lib was dead milliseconds after Hammerstrike.

He might become ultra conservative, rejecting the impossible even after it had become fact

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

a historian named Herodotus, tells of a thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing hymns.

Speaker-To-Animals said one thing more before he turned back to his table. Louis Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap. You scream and you leap, said Louis. Great.

Nothing that works is silly.

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.

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. - Mark Twain

We have sent no probes, of course.

It's plate tectonics, Mark said. You know, the continents float around on top of the melted rock inside the Earth. Frank listened absently. No point in correcting Mark. But the Mojave was certainly a better place.

The period tells us the mass, of course

She is intelligent, tanjit! She's just never been hurt!......All you've got to do is watch her walk. Clumsy. Every second, it looks like she's going to fall over. But she doesn't. She doesn't knock things over with her elbows. She doesn't spill things or drop things. She never did. She never learned not to, don't you see? So she's not graceful.

Six times over several centuries, you attacked the worlds of men. Six times you were defeated, having lost approximately two-thirds of your male population in each war. Need I comment on the level of intelligence displayed? No?

trust his intent, question his judgment

You might find it helpful to read the works of Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson. The hallmark of a truly great philosopher is that he never writes books on philosophy, and those two are the best. Anderson for how to get along with people who are conspicuously wrong, and Heinlein for when not to.

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

When the population of Kzin grows too great, we— Attack the nearest human world.

First ponder, then dare.  - Helmuth von Moltke

Maybe Tunesmith was mad. Louis asked, "Are you suggesting that ships that use hyperdrive near a star are eaten?" Tunesmith said, "Yes." Crazy. But . . . the Hindmost continued his work with the recordings and Needle's instruments. He hadn't flinched at the notion of predators eating spacecraft. The puppeteer already knew.