Paul Graham > Quotes

“A word to the wise is sufficient.”
― Paul Graham

“Like painting, most software is intended for a human audience. And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work. You have to be able to see things from the user’s point of view.”
― Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

“Take as much risk as you can afford. In an efficient market, risk is proportionate to reward, so don't look for certainty, but for a bet with high expected value. If you're not failing occasionally, you're probably being too conservative”
― Paul Graham

“An obsessive interest in a topic is both a proxy for ability and a substitute for determination.”
― Paul Graham

“This sounds like a paradox, but a great painting has to be better than it has to be. For example, when Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head. In it he carefully painted each individual leaf. Many painters might have thought, this is just something to put in the background to frame her head. No one will look that closely at it.

Not Leonardo. How hard he worked on part of a painting didn't depend at all on how closely he expected anyone to look at it. He was like Michael Jordan. Relentless.

Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible”
― Paul graham

“It’s essential to work on something you’re deeply interested in. Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could. The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all.”
― Paul Graham

“We overestimate the damage done by procrastinating for a day and underestimate the damage done by procrastinating for several years.”
― Paul Graham

“I think it's because humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one's sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one's sense of humor is to be wounded by them. And so the mark- - or at least the prerogative- - of strength is not to take oneself too seriously. The confident will often, like swallows, seem to be making fun of the whole process slightly, as Hitchcock does in his films or Bruegel in his paintings- - or Shakespeare, for that matter.”
― Paul Graham, Paul Graham: Essays - Volume 1, 1993-2005

“You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. And I mean that last "well" in both senses. You have to be good at reading, and read good things. People who just want information may find other ways to get it. But people who want to have ideas can't afford to.”
― Paul Graham, Paul Graham: Essays - Volume 1, 1993-2005

“Merely having energy and imagination is quite rare. But to solve hard problems you need three more qualities: resilience, good judgement, and a focus on some kind of goal.”
― Paul Graham

“A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen”
― Paul Graham

“Successful people tend to be persistent. New ideas often don't work at first, but they're not deterred. They keep trying and eventually find something that does.”
― Paul Graham