Intellectual curiosity was not one of the motives on the FBI’s list. Indeed, the whole concept seemed foreign to them. Those in authority tend to be … - Paul Graham

Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers’ general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers.

A startup's ascent often consists of alternating rises and flat spots. This puzzled me when I first saw it at Viaweb. But it turns out just to be what happens when you add a function representing "random ups and downs" to one that's consistently increasing.

Someone asked what's the most underappreciated quality in startup founders. I realized I could answer this by asking what's the most underappreciated aspect of startups. That's easy: how hard they are. So the most underappreciated quality in founders is sheer toughness.

Histories of 20th century art will be portraits of the time and place in which they were written.