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.

Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing.

Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all.

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

A civilization has the ethics it can afford

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.

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