Larry Niven
Quotes
And the air was full of the smell of burning bridges.
p. 166
There is never no hope left. Remember.
p. 280
Forget the infinities: Concentrate on detail.
p. 68
“For letting us examine their silly records they want to charge us a flat million marks!”
“Pay it.”
“It’s robbery.”
“A Belter says that? Why don’t you have records on Mars?”
“We were never interested. What for?”
“What about abstract knowledge?”
“Another word for useless.”
“Then what makes you want useless knowledge enough to pay a million marks for it?”
Slowly Nick matched his grin. “It’s still robbery. How in Finagle’s name did Earth know they’d need to know about Mars?”
“That’s the secret of abstract knowledge. You get in the habit of finding out everything you can about everything. Most of it gets used sooner or later.”
p. 45
“How did you come to represent the belt?”
“Aptitude tests said I had a high IQ and liked ordering people around. From there I worked my way up.”
“We go by the vote.”
“Popularity contests.”
“It works. But it does have drawbacks. What government doesn’t?”
p. 57
The stars are far from eternal, but for man they might as well be.
p. 7
What’s the justification for ancestor worship? You know what happens to a man without modern geriatrics: as he ages his brain cells start to die. Yet people tend to respect him, to listen to him.
p. 86
Sometimes there’s no point in giving up.
p. 282
Brennan was an optimist. He didn’t expect to be caught.
p. 16
We learn only to ask more questions.
p. 59
The Perversity of the Universe Tends Toward a Maximum.
p. 23
I’m being chauvinistic, he told himself. I can’t judge an alien’s sanity by Belt standards, can I? His lip curled. Sure I can. That ship is badly designed.
p. 21
