Paul Graham Quotes

There are, unfortunately, people in the world who enjoy hurting other people. And they don't wear signs advertising this, or everyone would avoid them.

It's a fallacy to think you should drop out of college because you have an idea that has to be implemented right now, or it will be too late. If you stay in school you'll have other and better ideas.

Don't imitate qualities of your heroes at random. Some are flaws they succeeded despite. The qualities that are easiest to imitate are the most likely to be the flaws.

If you really want to hold yourself to a high standard, graph the growth rate of the number you care about instead of the number itself. Then you're winning if you can even keep it flat.

I expected technology to make programming less laborious, as it does to most things. But I have to admit I expected it to happen by programmers switching to more powerful languages, rather than continuing to write programs full of boilerplate, but having AIs generate most of it.

Prestige is an ok motivator, but curiosity is a better one. Curiosity never lies.

When you try something new, you inevitably attract haters. So not being deterred by haters is one of the skills you need in order to make change happen. Like most skills, it's a combination of natural ability and practice. But don't expect not to have to practice.

Prediction: Remote work will become so fashionable that even companies that don't get it will try to embrace it, leading to a bimodal distribution of outcomes.

This bimodal distribution will be the same we've seen over and over already: tech cos will win.

The only thing worse than having the CEO knee-deep in building stuff with AI is not having the CEO knee-deep in building stuff with AI.

Garry Tan is a moral canary in a coal mine. When people hate on Garry Tan, they out themselves as either evil or stupid, because in fact Garry is as close to a 100% good guy as you get.

One big advantage Google has over Microsoft when they were having the paradigm shifted out from under them is not being run by Steve Ballmer.

The easiest people to trick are those who want to believe something false.

When describing a startup it's usually better to use verbs rather than nouns. Say what you do rather than what you are. Not because it sounds more dynamic, but simply because it's clearer.

People tend to underestimate how much things can change, and this causes them to undervalue ideas that aren't viable now but could be in the future.

When startups are doing well it's common for them either not to disclose their numbers, or under-report them. Half the time when I get an email with great numbers, it's followed by "but don't tell anyone."