Top 15 Paul Graham Quotes

A Palestinian child's life is worth as much as an Israeli child's life.

It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.

I used to think <person> was smart. Then I discovered that he disagrees with me about <political issue>, and I realized he couldn't be, because no one who disagrees with me about <political issue> could be smart.

If you're socially awkward, people will mistakenly think you dislike them, and that will make them actually dislike you.

I don't agree with Elon about everything, but you have to give him this: He's achieved much more than roughly 100% of his critics.

Something I just told a founder: Stay as small as you can for as long as you can. People who come to visit your office should always be surprised that such an important company has so few employees.

Stay as small as you can for as long as you can. People who come to visit your office should always be surprised that such an important company has so few employees.

If you're hungry but too lazy to prepare healthy food, you'll consume junk food. If you're hungry for knowledge but too lazy to seek out the truth, you'll consume misinformation.

With ambition, you tend to get one step below what you aim for. So unless you try to be the best, you won't even be good.

Automatically disbelieving authorities isn't independent-mindedness. It's just conformism with the sign bit flipped.

I don't mind when people are unambitious. It's up to each person to decide that. But it bugs me when the people who aren't ambitious try to bring down those who are.

1. When you write something intended to be read by an important person, go through it and cut every unnecessary word.

2. The reader of anything you publish is an important person.

If you have a mocking personality, people won't bring you new ideas.

Some very simple math: if a country has 5% of the world's population and ability is evenly distributed, then 95% of the people who are best at any given thing will be born abroad.

You can't replace reading with other sources of information like videos, because you need to read in order to write well, and you need to write in order to think well.