Paul Graham citations (43 citations)

Paul Graham: 43 citations0 J'aime

Paul Graham: Citations en anglais

“Your teachers are always telling you [high school students] to behave like adults. I wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults…. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time.”

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Paul Graham

"What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005

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

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Paul Graham

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

“No matter what you work on, you're not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well. There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.”

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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.)”

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Paul Graham

"Good And Bad Procrastination", December 2005

“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.”

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Paul Graham

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

“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.”

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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.”

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Paul Graham

"What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005

“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.”

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Paul Graham

"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.”

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Paul Graham

"How To Lose Time And Money", July 2010

“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.”

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Paul Graham

"Why Nerds are Unpopular," February 2003

“Consulting is where product companies go to die.”

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Paul Graham

"How to Fund a Startup" http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html, November 2005

“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.”

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Paul Graham

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

“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.”

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Paul Graham

"The Other Road Ahead" http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html, September 2001

“Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending. There are exceptions of course, but usually the way to win is to race ahead, not to stop and fight.”

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Paul Graham

"Mean People Fail", November 2014

“There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating grad student.”

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Paul Graham

"How to Start a Startup" http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html, March 2005

“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.”

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Paul Graham

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

“A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of.”

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Paul Graham

"Hackers and Painters" http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html, May 2003

“One thing that leads us astray here is that the selector seems to be in a position of power. That makes him seem like a judge. If you regard someone judging you as a customer instead of a judge, the expectation of fairness goes away. The author of a good novel wouldn't complain that readers were unfair for preferring a potboiler with a racy cover. Stupid, perhaps, but not unfair.”

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Paul Graham

"Two Kinds Of Judgment", April 2007

“Google never did any advertising. They're like dealers; they sell the stuff, but they know better than to use it themselves.”

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Paul Graham

"How to Start a Startup" http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html, March 2005

“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.”

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Paul Graham

"A Plan for Spam" http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html, August 2002

“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.”

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Paul Graham

"Two Kinds Of Judgment", April 2007

“If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You [high school students] don't need to be in a rush to choose your life's work. What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do.”

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Paul Graham

"What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 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.”

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Paul Graham

"Good And Bad Procrastination", December 2005

“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.”

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Paul Graham

"What You'll Wish You'd Known", January 2005

“Jessica and I have always worked hard to teach our kids not to be mean. We tolerate noise and mess and junk food, but not meanness.”

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Paul Graham

"Mean People Fail", November 2014

“Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children.”

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Paul Graham

"Why Nerds are Unpopular," February 2003

“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.”

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Paul Graham

"Why Startups Condense in America" http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html, May 2006

“Being mean makes you stupid. That's why I hate fights. You never do your best work in a fight, because fights are not sufficiently general. Winning is always a function of the situation and the people involved. You don't win fights by thinking of big ideas but by thinking of tricks that work in one particular case. And yet fighting is just as much work as thinking about real problems.”

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Paul Graham

"Mean People Fail", November 2014

“The world seemed cruel and boring, and I'm not sure which was worse.”

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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.”

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Paul Graham

"Why Nerds are Unpopular," February 2003

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Naomi Klein1

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Michel Onfray53

philosophe français None

Nassim Nicholas Taleb2

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écrivaine turque None

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