Later we'll find it hard to believe that masked thugs were dragging people off the street at gunpoint. At least I hope we will, since the other alter… - Paul Graham

The value of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is not just that it prevents you from messing up things that are going well, but that it also causes you to focus instead on fixing the things that are real problems.

And the reason everyone doesn’t use Listp is that programming languages are not merely technologies, but habits of mind as well, and nothing changes slower.

If you'd asked me as a kid how rich people became poor, I'd have said by spending all their money. That's how it happens in books and movies, because that's the colorful way to do it. But in fact the way most fortunes are lost is not through excessive expenditure, but through bad investments.