Paul Graham Quotes

People who are good at programming will use AI to take the jobs of those who are mediocre at it. So you should study CS iff you're going to be good at it.

People who think they no longer depend on trusting experts only survive because they're mistaken. Every time you get on a plane you trust experts implicitly about a million questions you're not even aware of.

It is even more difficult to get a man to understand something when his identity depends on his not understanding it.

Prediction: In the AI age, taste will become even more important. When anyone can make anything, the big differentiator is what you choose to make.

Unexpected advantage of appointing board members who already have significant achievements: being on your board is not the main source of their importance, so they won't tend to cling to their seats even when it's obviously time to leave.

It's a superpower to be interested in important things that most other people find boring. They'll do them out of duty, if they do them at all. So if you do them out of genuine interest, you'll get a lot further.

Being both imaginative and determined is a powerful combination because it's so rare — so many imaginative people are dreamy and ineffective, and so many determined people are merely energetic robots.

The reason PowerPoint is so popular is the same reason Bezos banned it: it saves you from having to think.

If you make your app 10% easier to use you'll get twice as many users.

When a political figure is killed, his supporters want to believe he was killed by some powerful, organized "them." They want his death to be meaningful, and it's more meaningful to be killed by a powerful political force than a random nut, as most actual killers turn out to be.

When a misbehaving child knows he's going to have to give in and do as he's told, the final stage of resistance is to do it really slowly.

One of the most consistent mistakes I made when I was younger was to spend my time learning about things that other people thought were interesting — things that were cool or prestigious — instead of trusting my own curiosity.

Math and science education is particularly important for social mobility, because proficiency in these subjects is much harder to fake. A semi-smart rich kid can learn how to sound like he knows a lot about literature, but this is impossible with math.

Good cofounder > no cofounder > bad cofounder.

This may seem obvious but a lot of people don't seem to grasp it.

The holidays are the best time for working. Everyone who usually interrupts you isn't.