Paul Graham Quotes

It's a novel thing, and not in a good way, to hear the US government sounding like the dictators we used to ridicule in past decades. This is a decline that transcends the battle between left and right. No previous administration has sounded like this.

The power of established ideas is so great that even the most independent-minded people only rarely overcome it. The difference between independent-minded and conventional-minded people is that the former see past established ideas 1% of the time, and the latter 0%.

Something I taught 11 yo: The less competent the judges in a contest, the less it matters to win it.

The way ro really do big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things

Excessive use of the word "layperson" is a bad sign in a field.

If the far left are upset that having advanced math classes in public schools produces unequal outcomes, wait till they see how unequal the outcomes are without such classes.

And you had better have a convincing explanation of why your technology would be hard to duplicate. Otherwise as soon as some big company becomes aware of it, they’ll make their own, and with their brand name, capital, and distribution clout, they’ll take away your market overnight. You’d be like guerillas caught in the open field by regular army forces.

wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALS and neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison.

People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage — just a shorthand — for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.4

The advantage of a medium of exchange is that it makes trade work. The disadvantage is that it tends to obscure what trade really means.

People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage — just a shorthand — for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.

There are only two things you have to know about business: build something users love, and make more than you spend.

Google never did any advertising. They're like dealers; they sell the stuff, but they know better than to use it themselves.

If you suppress variations in income, whether by stealing private fortunes, as feudal rulers used to do, or by taxing them away, as some modern governments have done, the result always seems to be the same. Society as a whole ends up poorer.

In both cases, what it all comes down to is users. You’d think that a company about to buy you would do a lot of research and decide for themselves how valuable your technology was. Not at all. What they go by is the number of users you have.