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Quotes from The Mote in God's Eye — Larry Niven

born 1938 United States

← All quotes by Larry Niven

11 quotes

He liked everything about the university except the students.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

I sometimes wonder why the aristocracy isn’t extinct, the lot of you seem so stupid sometimes.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

Rod privately suspected the Scots studied their speech off duty so they’d be unintelligible to the rest of humanity.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

She waited for him to explain a universe in which there was so much injustice.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

Doctor, you keep asking me to see your point of view, which is based on ethics. You never see mine, which isn’t.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

It had been a long dull evening, with only the thought of leaving the party early to look forward to.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

“Perhaps I was expecting too much.”
“Perhaps. We’re all waiting as fast as we can.”

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

As I said, it was inevitable, and I don’t let laws of nature upset me.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

And that’s another reason I don’t want contact between your species and mine. You’re all Crazy Eddies. You think every problem has a solution.

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

“It’s a nitwit idea.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you’ve got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.”

The Mote in God's Eye (1974)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Larry Niven (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.