PG on startups wiring proces https://byronm.com/13sentences.html on journalists dishonest https://x.com/paulg/status/1461633512344326146 https://paulgraham.com/quo.html "Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people." – G. M. Trevelyan, "Bias in History" "The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases." – Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." – Mark Twain "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." – Goering at the Nuremberg Trials "Focusing is about saying no." – Steve Jobs "It is said that there is a technical term for people who believe that little boys and little girls are born indistinguishable and are molded into their natures by parental socialization. The term is 'childless.'" – Steven Pinker "I didn't make a decision to pursue astronomy. Rather, it just grabbed me, and I had no thought of escaping." – Carl Sagan "Because most entrenched bureaucracies tend to develop a strong aversion to changing the status quo, state-run technological progress is not likely to be sustained over long periods." – Joel Mokyr "I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one." – Bill Gates "What every scientist knows, but few will admit, is that the requirement for great success is great ambition. Moreover, the ambition is for personal triumph over other men, not merely over nature." – Richard Lewontin "If you want to combat error, critique your in-group. You speak their language and they trust you, so you might persuade someone. If you want to raise your status, critique your out-group. They won't listen, but your in-group will love it." – Bryan Caplan If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking." – Leslie Lamport "Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done." – NPR CEO Katherine Maher "I have never seen ordinary effort lead to extraordinary results." – Alexandr Wang