“6) It is easier to destroy than create.
Bin Laden tore down the World Trade Center? Let's see him build one. If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever.”

— Larry Niven

Niven's Laws

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Larry Niven 138

American writer 1938

Related quotes

“If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Niven's Laws
Context: 6) It is easier to destroy than create.
Bin Laden tore down the World Trade Center? Let's see him build one. If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever.

“After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist incidents, "The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond. Bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

As quoted in "Giuliani Faults Bill Clinton for Terror Response in 1990s" (26 June 2007) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286849,00.html

“There's nothing that's ever happened in the world that didn't start in one human mind.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, In Depth with Tom Clancy (2002)

“Ancient astronauts didn't build the pyramids. Human beings built the pyramids, because they're clever and they work hard.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

Variant: No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids - human beings built them because they're clever and they work hard. And 'Star Trek' is about those things.

“Unfortunately, it is easier to destroy a country than to re-build it.”

Robert Sarah (1945) Roman Catholic bishop

God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith (2015)

“To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries — this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, it the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation

“F*ck political correctness, that went down with the World Trade Center.”

Blackie Lawless (1956) musician, songwriter and actor

In the liner notes of the album "Dying for the World"

“We're going to get bin Laden. Dead or alive, it doesn't matter to me.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

12/14/2001 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1711874.stm Bush's words elsewhere was that he is "determined" to capture Bin Laden dead or alive, and is confident about succeeding http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1711717.stm
2000s, 2001

“Anybody visiting the Middle East in the last decade has had the experience: meeting the hoarse and aggressive person who first denies that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and then proceeds to describe the attack as a justified vengeance for decades of American imperialism… professor Noam Chomsky decides to leave that central question open. We have no more reason to credit Osama Bin Laden's claim of responsibility, he states, than we would have to believe Chomsky's own claim to have won the Boston Marathon… Nothing serious," as Chomsky puts it, "has been provided since.".. So is one to assume that he [Chomsky] has pored through the completed findings of the 9/11 Commission? Viewed any of the videos in which the 9/11 hijackers are seen in the company of Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? Read the transcripts of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker"? Followed the journalistic investigations of Lawrence Wright, Peter Bergen, or John Burns, to name only some of the more salient? Acquainted himself with the proceedings of associated and ancillary investigations into the bombing of the USS Cole or indeed the first attempt to bring down the Twin Towers in the 1990s?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2010s, 2011

“Q: What would you say to Bin Laden and George Bush?
A: I have to look at them as human beings. What one person had done for the world, is terrible, but for my perspective … if it was morning I would say "good morning" and if it was afternoon I would say, "good afternoon"
Q:That's all?
A: That's all. It is not my place to judge them.
Q: Thank you very much, Maharaji.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

"In Conversation", TV interview by Rajiv Mehrotra, Doordarshan Television News, India, 3 March 2006.
2000s

“6) It is easier to destroy than create.Bin Laden tore down the World Trade Center? Let's see him build one. If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever.”

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Larry Niven 138

Related quotes

“6) It is easier to destroy than create.
Bin Laden tore down the World Trade Center? Let's see him build one. If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever.”