Paul Graham

Scientist

1964-11-13

Quotes by Paul Graham

• If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.

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• It's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower.

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• The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.

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• At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.

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• People who write about politics, whether on the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously.

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• You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people you have to do things that are arbitrary and believe things that are false.

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• There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating college student.

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• People who write about politics, whether on the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously.

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• You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people you have to do things that are arbitrary and believe things that are false.

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• There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating college student.

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• The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.

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• If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.

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• At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.

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• It's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower.

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• There are plenty of smart people who get nowhere.

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• One startup I dream of funding is the one that kills the record companies.

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• In the startup world, 'not working' is normal.

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• When Facebook first started, and it was just a social directory for undergrads at Harvard, it would have seemed like such a bad startup idea, like some student side project.

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• Like having a child, running a startup is the sort of experience that's hard to imagine unless you've done it yourself.

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• Startups often have to do dubious things.

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