People who do good work often think that whatever they’re working on is no good. Others see what they’ve done and think it’s wonderful, but the creat… - Paul Graham

At any given time, there are only about ten or twenty places where hackers most want to work, and if you aren't one of them, you won't just have fewer great hackers, you'll have zero.

When I was a kid I was constantly being told to look at things from someone else’s point of view. What this always meant in practice was to do what someone else wanted, instead of what I wanted. This of course gave empathy a bad name, and I made a point of not cultivating it. Boy, was I wrong. It turns out that looking at things from other people’s point of view is practically the secret of success. Empathy doesn’t necessarily mean being self-sacrificing. Far from it. Understanding how someone else sees things doesn’t imply that you’ll act in his interest; in some situations — in war, for example — you want to do exactly the opposite.

Since ideologues get their opinions in bulk, they assume everyone else does too, and thus that anyone who disagrees with one of their opinions must disagree with all of them.