Paul Graham: Most

Paul Graham is English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist. Explore interesting quotes on most.

Paul Graham: 86 quotes4 likes

“The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want.”

"What you can't say" http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html, January 2004

“Architects know that some kinds of design problems are more personal than others. One of the cleanest, most abstract design problems is designing bridges. There your job is largely a matter of spanning a given distance with the least material. The other end of the spectrum is designing chairs. Chair designers have to spend their time thinking about human butts.”

"Five Questions about Language Design" http://www.paulgraham.com/langdes.html, May 2001

“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.”

"Why Nerds are Unpopular," February 2003

“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.”

"How To Lose Time And Money", July 2010

“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.”

"Great Hackers" http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html, July 2004

“The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work. When you spend time having fun, you know you're being self-indulgent. Alarms start to go off fairly quickly. If I woke up one morning and sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I'd feel like something was terribly wrong. … But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work.”

"How To Lose Time And Money"], July 2010

“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.
"Good And Bad Procrastination"], December 2005

“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.”

"How To Lose Time And Money", July 2010

“The more you realize that most judgements are greatly influenced by random, extraneous factors—that most people judging you are more like a fickle novel buyer than a wise and perceptive magistrate—the more you realize you can do things to influence the outcome.”

"Two Kinds Of Judgment", April 2007