Paul Graham Quotes

If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.

Paul Graham

• Words
• Understand
• Thrashing

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I don't understand why every guy is not a romantic. I enjoy it.

  

  Aaron Paul
  • Why
  • Guy
  • Enjoy

• I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

  

  V. S. Naipaul
  • Understand
  • Find
  • Start

• The kitchen is where we deal with the elements of the universe. It is where we come to understand our past and ourselves.

  

  Laura Esquivel
  • Past
  • Universe
  • Understand

• There is nothing cooler than to have them singing your words back to you. The last show I did, I was kind of nervous about putting the mic out there, because you're not sure how it's going to go. But I did, and they sang the whole chorus. I thought, 'Holy crap! That is the coolest feeling.' It's the biggest rush ever.

  

  RaeLynn
  • Words
  • Feeling
  • Singing

• I can understand the Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse-tung.

  

  Ferdinand Marcos
  • Revolution
  • Understand

• Quiet people, people who aren't given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - they're also fun to play, but you find yourself needing a laser precision in those roles. Otherwise you just sort of stand around, looking slightly brain-dead. You worry about being uninteresting.

  

  Damian Lewis
  • People
  • Fun
  • Words

• Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

  

  Karl Marx
  • Mind
  • Religion
  • Understand

• They've got this house style which is writer driven. I heard of one person who sent his script in, and Karen Berger said there weren't enough words in it. Put some more in.

  

  Eddie Campbell
  • House
  • Words
  • Style

• A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself. It's sort of like a prism, which you can see from each facet a single totality.

  

  Yo-Yo Ma
  • Good
  • Music
  • Words

• There's no such thing as a healthy tan, and that's what people need to understand.

  

  Gabrielle Union
  • People
  • Understand
  • Healthy

• I assume that we are all limited by our own brains and experiences and can only understand other people and other creatures through a kind of translation that brings them closer to us.

  

  Karen Joy Fowler
  • People
  • Kind
  • Understand

• People get really scared when women reclaim words, talk about themselves honestly and also make jokes because it's a really unstoppable combination.

  

  Caitlin Moran
  • People
  • Women
  • Words

• Each person's body type is different, and they need to understand that food should be eaten in regular portions.

  

  Karan Singh Grover
  • Different
  • Food
  • Body

• Any story that I can consider worth telling is one that you could tell in words.

  

  Ira Glass
  • You
  • Words
  • Story

• I never storyboard. I hate it. I don't understand why so many directors want to make comic strips of their films.

  

  Patrice Leconte
  • Why
  • Want
  • Hate

• And understand: class differences will not save you.

  

  H. Rap Brown
  • Understand
  • Differences

• Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

  

  O. Henry
  • Family
  • Love
  • Art

• My appearances are almost theatrical performances. I bring items for the children to see, such as photographs and actual piece of meteorite, a family quilt, sometimes spectacles, sometimes clothing, so that they can understand what I write about is family stories based in fact.

  

  Patricia Polacco
  • Children
  • Family
  • Understand

• Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel's song, which had lost its way and come on Earth, and sang on undyingly, smiting the hearts of men with sweetest wounds, and putting for the while an angel's nature into us.

  

  Frederick William Faber
  • World
  • Music
  • Men

• Covering the civil-rights movement was a mind- and eye-opener for me. Houston was a segregated society, as was Texas as a whole - some of it by law, a lot of it by fear and tradition. But there was no violence where I lived, and if there was hate, it was either concealed from me or I just didn't recognize it.

  

  Dan Rather
  • Mind
  • Society
  • Fear

• I was the first in my family to graduate college.

  

  Duke Johnson
  • Family
  • College

• 'Saturday Night Fever,' Paula Abdul, 'Fame,' Debbie Allen... all affected me and the generation before me.

  

  Laurieann Gibson
  • Night
  • Saturday

• Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.

  

  Thomas Carlyle
  • Talking
  • Little
  • Eloquence

• If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.

  

  Paul Graham
  • Words
  • Understand
  • Thrashing