Larry Niven Quotes

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.

Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book.

However big the fool, there is always a bigger fool to admire him.

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.

The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.

Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.

Love is blind. My politics has been, too. I think you can fall in love with ideas, and you can fall in love with people. It's a very subjective experience. And I'm loyal to that experience.

All the Khmer leaders and nobles, all the district chiefs and all the common people are ignorant, stupid, foolish and gullible. They have no idea what is true and what is false.

Happily we do not idolize our public men.

It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudosimplicities of brutal directness.

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

It is perilous to ignore idiotic ideas if those idiotic ideas are broadly and fervently believed.

There is no more dangerous error than that of mistaking the effect for the cause.

The ignorant classes had been taught to believe that certain words such as "sovereignty," "protection," and so forth had peculiar meanings disastrous to their welfare and significant of future political domination, like that from which they had been recently freed.

Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.

Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.

Public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice

Prejudices were deeply rooted; the people really believed themselves to be the richest of the world, even though they lived in destitution. They took the potentialities of the country for actual wealth.

The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.

The religion of Hell is patriotism.

The advantage of being a leftist has always been that it's easy. You don't have to think, you just need to feel. You don't need to reason, engage in inquiry, or study. You just need to have emotions and express them.

America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don't think that way. We don't think much at all, thank God.

I am a student of stupidity. I am a political reporter.

I don't think that, you know, adherence to ignorance is really something that encourages voters to support you.