Quotes by 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
Because hackers are makers rather than scientists, the right place to look for metaphors is not in the sciences, but among other kinds of makers.
– Paul Graham
Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as 'suits'.
– Paul Graham
Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design - designing too early what a program should do.
– Paul Graham
I suppose I should learn Lisp, but it seems so foreign.
– Paul Graham
In both painting and hacking there are some tasks that are terrifyingly ambitious, and others that are comfortably routine. It's a good idea to save some easy tasks for moments when you would otherwise stall.
– Paul Graham
So hackers start original, and get good, and scientists start good, and get original.
– Paul Graham
Nerds don't just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity.
– Paul Graham
It's hard to say exactly what it is about face-to-face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology.
– Paul Graham
If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.
– Paul Graham