Paul Graham Quotes

United Kingdom, Computer Scientist
November 13, 1964

Paul Graham is an English born computer scientist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author, and essayist. He is best known for his work on Lisp, his former startup Viaweb (later renamed "Yahoo! Store"), co-founding the influential startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator, his blog, and Hacker News. He is the author of several programming books, such as: On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004). Technology journalist Steven Levy has described Graham as a "hacker philosopher".

Also known as Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, Author, Essayist

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
The best thing software can be is easy, but the way to do this is to get the defaults right, not to limit users' choices.

Paul Graham
- Choices
- Software
- User

Consulting is where product companies go to die.

Paul Graham
- Die
- Companies
- Consulting
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.

Paul Graham
- Work
- Expect
- Reward
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.

Paul Graham
- World
- Changes
- Plans
You know your business model is broken when you're suing your customers.

Paul Graham
- Business
- Customer
- Suing
While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.

Paul Graham
- Popular
- Answers
- Please
The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want.

Paul Graham
- Think
- Want
- Say

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.

Paul Graham
- Goal
- End
- Judgement
If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.

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
- Business
- Ideas
- Suits