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Quotes

paulgraham.com

225 pointsdrdre200182 comments

I'll have to add some of these to my list of quotes that emacs greets me with. Current list:

  (defvar scratch-quotes
  (list
   "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. - Mike Tyson"
   "Look, I made a hat...where there never was a hat. - Finishing the hat, Sondheim"
   "Just fucking figure it out."
   "The universe is not here to please you. - Charles Murtaugh"
   "Your life is your life. The gods await to delight in you. - Bukowski"
   "Join the force and get a pension. - Salesman"
   "Beware of things that are fun to argue. - Eliezer Yudkowsky"
   "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the result. - Winston Churchill"
   "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. - John Von Neumann"
   "Writing program code is a good way of debugging your thinking. - Bill Venables"
   "Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value. - Joe Biden quoting his father"
   "Most haystacks do not even have a needle. - Lorenzo"
   "Experiment and theory often show remarkable agreement when performed in the same laboratory. - Daniel Bershader"
   "The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men. - George Eliot"
   "It is astonishing what foolish things a man thinking alone can come temporarily to believe. - Keynes"
   "The purpose of computing is Insight, not numbers. - Richard Hamming"
   "Work on stuff that matters. - Tim O'Reilly"
   "Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect. - Teller"
   "You have to say something. It can't all be technique. - Woody Allen (on great actors)"
   ;; Paraphrased from a HN comment
   "Perfectionism is a failure to optimize across a complex goal space, settling, instead, on ignoring the difficult prioritisation problem in favor of over-optimizing a limited set of tangible and easily-defined goals over longer-run priorities" 
   ))

I have some text files full of quotes, but I've found that i enjoy browsing my collections on Pinterest.

Inspirational Words: http://pin.it/thWAFJ4

Life is Short: http://pin.it/XnNjdnN

Quotes: http://pin.it/NE6Lvcl

Aphorisms: http://pin.it/Nt4OYG7

In case anyone else is trying to find the original source of that HN comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12728168#12729864

Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.

That's really good. Particularly as it relates to non-financial budgets, such as a time budget. In fact it immediately got me out of my chair and up for some physical activity!

I'm going to borrow some of these for my emacs list :)

I keep a list of quotes that I read from time to time

* When the winds of change blow, some people build walls while others build windmills. — Chinese proverb

* There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway

* If you love life, then don't waste time, for time is what life is made of. - Bruce Lee

* If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it - Cicero.

* Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking. - Yeats

* Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire. - Yeats

Ben Franklin said it a while before Bruce Lee did...

* If you love life, then don't waste time, for time is what life is made of. - nindalf

The last one, worded slightly differently, is more correctly attributable to Plutarch.

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."

This. x1000. I've found that a lot of disagreement about ways to implement a feature can be solved by keeping this in mind.

> I've found that a lot of disagreement about ways to implement a feature can be solved by keeping this in mind.

I dunno, the usual reactions I get are more in line with the comments on this Stack Overflow post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43377533/should-python-er...

For whatever reason, making the case that code that actually performs some useful computation should be closer to the exception rather than the rule tends to result in people completely losing their shit.

I think the issue is that people don't want overhead. I don't want to wade through 12 lines of useless try raises to get my work done. I want to be able to enumerate the exceptions when I need them. For example, I may want to call my_function.possible_exceptions, but there is an issue here as well, two exceptions may be raised with different messages, so the class of the exception alone is not an acceptable identifier of what the exception is. Even attempts to create, say, a global register of unique exceptions would fail because of how dynamic a language like Python is.

In general readability of code has more to do with something like this:

    valid_filename = filename.ends_with? ".txt"
    return File.open(filename) if valid_filename

Versus something like this:

    return File.open(fn) if fn.ends_with? ".txt"

The former uses a longer variable that clearly shows what it is and reduces the mental overhead of having to figure out why we're returning (because the file is valid, we're finished with this function as intended).

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."

Not this. x1.

Now if this were true, you would read these programs as you would literature. But you don't. Instead, you only use these programs as you would a tool and then complain when they don't do what you want them to do fast enough or reliably enough.

In literature, you have expectations but not certainty about the ending. Only with a bad tool do you expect anything but certainty about the ending. Indeed the hallmark of a good program is that you don't have to read it to know how it ends.

Another anti-parallel is that literature (literate programming) admires originality whereas good engineering admires plagiarism.

I am possibly not the only one who prints out code and reads them?

Did it for code reviews when I was code reviewing C[1]. It really does help. Paper still has a place. Its amazing what you see on a page of paper that doesn't get seen on the screen.

1) which, since I was doing the code reviews, I wasn't allowed to write any production code, because who would review my code? :(

And annotate them. A pencil is still the most flexible tool for that.

There is such a thing as technical writing, I don't think anyone is saying code should be fiction.

do you really disagree with the idea that writing code, like writing prose, should strive for human clarity? that you should be able to easily understand it without mental gymnastics? that the writer should revise, rewrite and edit the code, and take pride in succinct clarity? because the computer doesn't give a poop, but people do (including your future self)?

you seem to be making ancillary points while being deliberately obtuse about the central one.

Clarity is great. Clarity is really most awesome. Myself, I write clean readable code because the person who has to read it the most is me. Where I utterly disagree with the SICP drivel is its only incidentally nod to efficiency. What fatuous gratuitous twaddle.

Programs are meant to be used and only incidentally for people to read. Some programs, we'll call them closed source, can't even be read, not even by Richard Stallman.

BTW, SICP was a required text in 61A when I took it. Required but then like many bibles, never assigned and never read. A few years later, I tried to but couldn't and so I sold my copy on Amazon. Got $25 for it.

Most often, program != code.

And regardless of the intention, code are read many, many more times than it is written, especially when you work in a company with multiple teams and that is spread out on multiple sites. And in my experience, badly written code causes bugs because the original intention is not clear.

You seem to be willfully abusing the relationship between literature and literate programming. Knuth was being provocative in his paper in linking them, but these are very clearly not the notions Knuth has in mind.

His purpose is altogether simpler. From his paper, the literate programmer focuses on "exposition". He or she "chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each means", and "strives for a program that is comprehensible... using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other."

Literate programming is not there to entertain you. It's there to be understood. Beware the programmer who disdains comprehension of their programs.

No, I am not willfully abusing but thank you anyways.

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

Literate programming is not there to entertain you. It's there to be understood. Beware the programmer who disdains comprehension of their programs.

Programs are pieces of engineering. As such they are meant to be used. Beware the programmer who admires their programming too much. If they have elegantly solved a problem that will come out in their solution's use and not in its literate form.

...right up until the time that someone else has to change it.

Yes, programs are there to be used. Literate programming as a technique, however, is designed to facilitate those programs being understood. I'm not sure how you conclude that this has anything to do with programmers "admiring their programming."

For any non-trivial program, you can not keep the entire program in your head at once. Flawed human memory means that we forget details of the code six months later.

This means we need to read code, even our own code, to understand what it's doing. Code that is harder for us to read is harder to work on.

That really sunk in for me when I realized that the entire point of OO classes (and even functions) is just to arrange the code in a way that makes sense to humans.

Any thoughts on the quote investigator?

That Wasn’t Mark Twain: How a Misquotation Is Born https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/famous-misquotation...

Eagle eyed readers and veteran HN'ers will note that "Tara Ploughman" is an anagram for "Not Paul Graham."

A classic HN thread on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554889

Oh damn, I've been on HN a long time.

> "I'm surrounded by postmodern idiots and blatherers. Your writings give me hope."

> - email from a reader

That is... quite a quote.

Most amusing to me is that Maciej Ceglowski of idlewords.com would probably say the exact opposite.

Some (start of) context: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Reading Maciej' comments about PG, HN, and Silicon Valley in general is a wonderful cure to the kind of madness that can pervade the place.

I find most quotes to be interesting sounding, but on deeper thinking incredibly vague or pointless.

Well the point is to get you thinking, so I wouldn't say it's pointless. If you've thought deeply enough about it to decide it doesn't matter, you've probably already absorbed the lesson you were supposed to learn. Most koans are completely pointless or vague, but in order to figure that out you have to understand it, and at that point you've already grown.

I find the opposite: most quotes are incredibly insightful and powerful, but wasted on people who can't act on them, and insist on vague and pointless lives.

Are you under the impression that personal attacks gain value by being florid?

Why would you call that a personal attack? It's my standard opinion on quotes. I used the same wording used to dismiss them to make the message stand out more.

To paraphrase Chesterton quotes have not been tried and found wanting. They have been tried, found hard to abide to, and been abandoned.

My favorite popular quotes are the ones that are borrowed from Shakespeare but stripped of all context, so they're commonly read as meaning something completely different.

Read books, or essays, or at least the whole dang poem (the quoted "The Second Coming" is really short!). It's nearly impossible to pack any kind of meaningful insight into a couple sentences.

^This is my new favorite quote.

> "Many big people were chasing me. I didn't know what to do. So I thought I would surprise them and throw it." - Garo Yepremian, Miami placekicker, after a disastrous attempt to throw a pass in the Super Bowl.

I don't understand this. What's the wisdom to be gleaned from this one?

Don't do something you're bad at just because you're getting external pressure to act.

There's something poetic about watching the play unfold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-pxMm_UdY4

You can learn a few things from this play that I think would help you in life. First is planning for the unexpected and knowing how to respond in a situation where you're about to panic. Given the context of the situation you win almost 100% of the time if you just fall down and do nothing after securing the ball. Great players recognize how to maximize their odds of winning, this rings true in many facets of life.

Second the whole sequence of events is simply incredibly funny, and this quote gives an answer to what everyone would ask after witnessing the play. "What was that guy thinking?"

> "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.'"

I have sometimes thought that one reason gay people might exist is that they're God's way of skewering the conservative idea that gender roles are absolutes fixed by nature. It occurred to me the other day that in the same vein, transgender people might be Her way of skewering the liberal idea that gender roles are total societal constructions.

I want to share some of quotes I see everyday:

1) The higher the mountain, the more treacherous the path - Frank Underwood

2) What you think, you become - Buddha

3) If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done

"Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form." -- Vladimir Nabokov

I feel like I was born as a rebel.

Given we’re sharing quote lists, allow me to spruik[1] my own contribution — Q4TD: Get one, per day. Available at the following places:

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/q4td

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/quote4theday

Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/110672212432591877153/posts

RSS: https://q4td.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Blog: https://q4td.blogspot.com/

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.” — Michel de Montaigne

[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spruik

"However little television you watch, watch less."

-David McCullough

Unless it's the HBO miniseries "John Adams", based on his book!

Or Westworld which is mindblowingly good!

Or the upcoming adams-westworld crossover where George III reveals that america is a theme park, the revolution has been fought many times and memory-wiped, and he only fought the war to get the americans past their julian jaynes preconsciousness.

(Of course this is revealed through G-III interviewing a nude john adams on a stool).

I love how he narrated his book 1776 for the audiobook version. He has an amazing voice coupled with his great writing style.

I get this sentiment, but man, there are some really great, high quality (cinematography, acting, sound, creativity) tv shows being made today, albeit most on streaming/premium services. I've experienced tv that has moved me as much, if not more than many books I've read. To think that this medium is mindless or unnecessary completely undermines so much of the art and thought that goes into crafting some of these shows. I think the issue is drawing the line between film made as art, and the sort of vapid shows that this quote is most likely referring to.

I've completed 9 days of 31 consecutive days of half marathons, everyday I take a picture of something inspirational/interesting on my run (easy on miami's south beach) but I also add a quote of the day, I'll probably use Mark Twain's quote today.

I ran xc/track in college, and I must say, that is likely a bad idea. You are going to hurt yourself, unless you've slowly built up to this. You should never increase your weekly mileage by more than 10% over the previous week. But don't take my word for it, I'm sure your body will let you know in the next week.

it's funny for the last week I have been running my last 8 with Robert "the raven" Kraft who is like the 6th or 7th leading streak runner - 8 miles a day for 42+ years, thru Miami hurricanes; heat/humidity; even hail. Nearly 120,000miles (just shy of 5x around the earth) and at 67 years old people are still waiting for him to stop just to say I told you so.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's dangerous to run 90 miles a week. It's dangerous to suddenly start running 90 miles a week.

Just looked that guy up though, I bet he's got some cool stories!

> "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."

This one has serious implication, not only in the computer programming world, of course.

A few good ones:

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020

http://rubyonrails.org/doctrine/

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

I spent a few months recently creating a quotes manager for iOS. Save and look up quotes by author, rating, source and tag.

[0] Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqwsznp_EY [1] Website: https://www.humanquote.com/

Here is one that deserves to be more popular.

"Solving operating systems problems with hardware interrupts is a lot like solving your own personal problems with heroin - at first it sorta works, but after a while things just get out of hand." - Fred B. Schneider, PhD

Here's my quote collection: https://www.evernote.com/pub/kristofferr/inspiringQuotes

he quotes one of my favorite poems, which is a good one to be reminded of (the whole poem, not just the quote) in these trying political times:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

- Yeats, The Second Coming

The best lack all conviction... kinda like YC Unicorns?

I started keeping all quotes/highlights from books I read https://podviaznikov.com/quotes

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."

- Abelson & Sussman, SICP, preface to the first edition

I may need a tattoo of this. (joking but only slightly)

Since everyone's posting theirs, here is mine: http://qte.tumblr.com/

"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."

-- George Bernard Shaw

It's a bit eye-rolling whenever a PG essay makes the top page here, but a page of PG's favorite quotes on HN in days when the US slips into a novel blend of kleptocracy and autocracy, the NYT notes the top five tech firms are basically monopolies, and the most successful of the last decade's startups prove fiscally inept at best, ethically-challenged at worst... well, poop.

Well this wasn't submitted by pg nor (presumably) did he ask anyone to submit or upvote this. What exactly are you complaining about?

I understand PG didn't submit it himself, but that it was submitted and upvoted, well, who cares? I'm surprised enough people care to make it hit the front page.

> It's a bit eye-rolling whenever a PG essay makes the top page here

I want to see good content on HN. Ruling out certain content that might be good, just because of who its author is, is, I think, ridiculous.

What you say may be more true than you think:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554889

HN has tons of threads on contemporary politics. PG's essays are insightful and, though not perfect, usually go deeper than everyday left vs right talking points.

HN has also become increasingly hostile to PG's views over time (for example, his inequality essay), so it's hardly an echo chamber. Personally, I preferred this place when there were more people who agreed with his basic worldview. And, though many in SV share his politics, he has a distinct way of thinking when compared with other billionaire thought leaders like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesen.

Completely broken on mobile. Looks fine if you request desktop mode.

You broke the first rule of HN: don't criticize pg.

A critique of a program isn't a critique of the programmer.

It's just not a critique of the programmer as a person -- but it very much is a critique of a programmer as a programmer.

At the risk of breaking an actual rule of HN by pointing it out, you clearly haven't been here that long.

That's entirely at odds with the data. More to the point, please don't troll here.

Same. does not make on chrome/Android.

Or iPhone.

Mods or OP, please change URL to http://paulgraham.com/quo.html?viewfullsite=1 to make it work on mobile

Thanks

"Completely broken on mobile. Looks fine if you request desktop mode." - Abraham Lincoln

Reply on news.ycombinator.com