Paul Graham Quotes
1964
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While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.
"Why Nerds are Unpopular", February 2003 
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More Paul Graham Quotes
The best thing software can be is easy, but the way to do this is to get the defaults right, not to limit users' choices.
Paul Graham— "The Other Road Ahead", September 2001
Software has to be designed by hackers who understand design, not designers who know a little about software. If you can't design software as well as implement it, don't start a startup.
Paul Graham— "The Other Road Ahead", September 2001
If you try to solve a hard problem, the question is not whether you will use a powerful enough language, but whether you will (a) use a powerful language, (b) write a de facto interpreter for one, or (c) yourself become a human compiler for one.
Paul Graham— "Revenge of the Nerds" May 2002
As a rule of thumb, the more qualifiers there are before the name of a country, the more corrupt the rulers. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the last place in the world you'd want to live.
Paul Graham— "A Plan for Spam", August 2002
The world seemed cruel and boring, and I'm not sure which was worse.
Paul Graham— "Why Nerds are Unpopular", February 2003
When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.
Paul Graham— "Why Nerds are Unpopular", February 2003
Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in your spare time, not in the fiercely competitive environment of an American secondary school.
Paul Graham— "Why Nerds are Unpopular", February 2003
If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies.
Paul Graham— "Why Nerds are Unpopular", February 2003
The other thing that's different about the real world [compared to high school] is that it's much larger. In a large enough pool, even the smallest minorities can achieve a critical mass if they clump together.
Paul Graham— "Why Nerds are Unpopular", February 2003
Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much closer to the one played in the real world.
Paul Graham— "Why Nerds are Unpopular", February 2003
A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of.
Paul Graham— "Hackers and Painters", May 2003
When those far removed from the creation of wealth -- undergraduates, reporters, politicians -- hear that the richest 5% of the people have half the total wealth, they tend to think injustice! An experienced programmer would be more likely to think is that all? The top 5% of programmers probably write 99% of the good software.
Paul Graham— "How to Make Wealth", May 2004
I've seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you're not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.
Paul Graham— "Great Hackers", July 2004
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.
Paul Graham— "Great Hackers", July 2004
There's no switch inside you [high school students] that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You can do that at any age.
Paul Graham— "What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005
It's not so important what you [high school students] work on, so long as you're not wasting your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you'll take.
Paul Graham— "What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005
The world changes fast, and the rate at which it changes is itself speeding up. In such a world it's not a good idea to have fixed plans.
Paul Graham— "What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005
Google never did any advertising. They're like dealers; they sell the stuff, but they know better than to use it themselves.
Paul Graham— "How to Start a Startup", March 2005
Competitors punch you in the jaw, but investors have you by the balls.
Paul Graham— "How to Fund a Startup", November 2005
Consulting is where product companies go to die.
Paul Graham— "How to Fund a Startup", November 2005
The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination [putting off important things to do unimportant things], because it doesn't feel like procrastination. You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things.
Paul Graham— "Good And Bad Procrastination", December 2005
If you work on something you can finish in a day or two, you can expect to have a nice feeling of accomplishment fairly soon. If the reward is indefinitely far in the future, it seems less real.
Paul Graham— "Good And Bad Procrastination", December 2005
Another reason people don't work on big projects is, ironically, fear of wasting time. What if they fail? Then all the time they spent on it will be wasted. (In fact it probably won't be, because work on hard projects almost always leads somewhere.)
Paul Graham— "Good And Bad Procrastination", December 2005
I think the way to "solve" the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you.
Paul Graham— "Good And Bad Procrastination", December 2005
European public opinion will apparently tolerate people being fired in industries where they really care about performance. Unfortunately the only industry they care enough about so far is soccer.
Paul Graham— "Why Startups Condense in America", May 2006
The first type of judgement is the type where judging you is the end goal... But in fact there is a second much larger class of judgements where judging you is only a means to something else.
Paul Graham— "Two Kinds Of Judgment", April 2007
Someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
Paul Graham— "The Acceleration of Addictiveness", July 2010
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.
Paul Graham— "How To Lose Time And Money", July 2010
