Larry Niven
American science fiction author, most famous as the author of Ringworld (1970), his "Known Space" stories, and Niven's laws.
7) Any damn fool can predict the past.
Sometimes there’s no point in giving up.
The majority is always sane.
We've fallen way behind. Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.
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.
Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with.
3) Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.
Anything you don't understand is dangerous until you do understand it.
Louis knew a few xenophobes, and regarded them as dolts.
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum. The universe is hostile.
We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes.
"You look like a girl with a secret," Matt said. "I think it must be the smile."
She moved closer to him, which was very close, and lowered her voice. "Can you keep a secret?"
Matt smiled with one side of his mouth to show that he knew what was coming. She said it anyway. "So can I."
1) Writers who write for other writers should write letters.
Stupidity is always a capital crime.
4) Giving up freedom for security has begun to look naive.
Even to me. Many of you were ahead of me on this — Three out of four hijacked airplanes destroyed the World Trade Center and a piece of the Pentagon in 2001. How is it possible that those planes were taken using only five perps armed with knives? It was possible because all those hundreds of passengers had been carefully stripped of every possible weapon. We may want to reconsider this approach. It doesn't work in high schools either.
2) Never be embarrased or ashamed about anything you choose to write. (Think of this before you send it to a market)
There is never no hope left. Remember.
Millard Parlette was near exhaustion. ... Sometimes it seemed to him, that he was at the end of his life, that he'd waited just long enough to meet this — the crisis he'd foreseen a hundred years ago. ... Known rebels moved freely through the Hospital, and no one could touch them. Their attitude toward the police was rude and contemptuous. Rumor had it that Millard Parlette was drafting new laws to further restrict police power. It didn't help that the rumors were true.
Cheap superconductors imply maglev trains everywhere. Computers could get big again, with RAM/ROM rising by powers of forty and fifty, if superconductors shed the heat.
Laser handguns against superconducting armor. I'm not predicting; I just love playing with superconductors.
2) Never fire a laser at a mirror.