Home > Work > The Ringworld Engineers (Ringworld, #2)
1 " How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf? "
― Larry Niven , The Ringworld Engineers (Ringworld, #2)
2 " I need exercise and solitude. This time of confinement has threatened my sanity! "
3 " Louis's excitement was growing unbearable. Was this really what he had needed all along? Not the droud and wire, but the risk of his life to prove its value! Louis adjusted his flying belt and dropped over the railing. "
4 " Why hadn't they built a lot of little Ringworlds instead? "
5 " Halrloprillalar's tale of the bacterium that eats superconductor is in our records," the Hindmost said. "
6 " have precious little free will," he was saying. "We're too intelligent not to see the right answers. "
7 " I'll have to get over this sooner or later, Louis thought. Why not now? A friend had taught him this cantrip, this bit of magic for recovering from shock or grief. Sometimes it worked. "
8 " Hindmost?" A head turned back. "Sometimes there's no point in giving up. "
9 " Yes. No risk is insane now, given the position your insanity has put us in." Louis burst out laughing (a puppeteer teaching courage to Louis Wu?) and sobered as suddenly. "
10 " Current addiction is the youngest of mankind's sins. At some time in their histories, most of the cultures of human space have seen the habit as a major scourge. It takes users from the labor market and leaves them to die of self-neglect. "
11 " Nothing lasts. You can't do any one thing for two hundred years. A marriage, a career, a hobby—they're good for twenty years, and maybe you go through a phase more than once. I did some experimental medicine. I wrote a big chunk of that documentary on the Trinoc culture that won a— "
