Treat your life like something to be sculpted.

I've spent a lot of my life among people brighter than myself.

Ethics change with technology.

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.

Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently.

I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.

I am trying to prevent a bloodbath. Is that clear enough for you? I'm trying to prevent a civil war that could kill half the people in this world.