108 Quotes by Paul Graham

To be fair, pros come out. They wear shorts. They have a good time. A lot of times if the guest hits a good drive, the pro will just say: 'Let's go.' It's just fun.

These last games are the most important. We want to be at the top, not at the bottom.

The Summer Founders Program fixes the common problem with working at a startup, which is that it's very lonely. You do nothing but work and sleep and no one understands the situation you are in, and friends don't know why it takes three days for you to call them back.

Then I said jokingly, but not entirely jokingly, 'But not from me,' and everyone's faces fell, ... Afterwards, I had dinner with some of these guys and they seemed amazingly competent and I thought, 'You know, these guys probably could start companies.'

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.

In previous elections, we've had voting stations overrun by panicky mobs, and there's been a bit more obvious intimidation.

Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly, but working for a large company is like being waterboarded.

The government spying on people doesn’t literally make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad ideas will win. And because this is so important to hackers, they’re especially sensitive to it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

The most important thing is not to let fundraising get you down. Startups live or die on morale. If you let the difficulty of raising money destroy your morale, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.