“A species that can't develop spaceflight is no better than animals.”
Source: Short fiction, A Hole in Space (1974), The Fourth Profession (p. 167)
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Larry Niven 138
American writer 1938Related quotes
“Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species.”
Liquidation (2003)
Context: Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species. We are all survivors, that is what determines our perverse and degenerate mental world. Auschwitz.
Species Conservation in Managed Habitats: The Myth of Pristine Nature (2016), p. 51
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born
Variant: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Source: Animal Farm
“We are no better than the animals; in fact in a lot of ways we aren't as good.”
Source: The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951), Chapter 9
“By far the most dangerous animal on the planet was an invasive species of ape.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016), Chapter 17 (p. 386)
They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded.
The Development Hypothesis (1852)
Melancholy hours, The Poetical Works and remains of Henry Kirke White, G. Routledge, London 1835.
Melancholy Hours
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17
Context: Fifth Theory.—This is our theory, or that of our Law.... The theory of man's perfectly free will is one of the fundamental principles of the Law of our teacher Moses, and of those who follow the Law. According to this principle man does what is in his power to do, by his nature, his choice, and his will; and his action is not due to any faculty created for the purpose. All species of irrational animals likewise move by their own free will. This is the Will of God; that is to say, it is due to the eternal divine will that all living beings should move freely, and that man should have the power to act according to his will or choice within the limits of his capacity.