Paul Graham：Earnestness, Excerpt 7

There's nothing morally wrong with starting a startup to make money. I just mean that those startups don't do as well. [ 3 ] The most powerful motivator for most people is probably family. But there are some for whom intellectual curiosity comes first. In his (wonderful) autobiography, Paul Halmos says explicitly that for a mathematician, math must come before anything else, including family. Which at least implies that it did for him. [ 4 ] Interestingly, just as the word "nerd" implies earnestness even when used as a metaphor, the word "politics" implies the opposite.

Source： https://paulgraham.com/earnest.html
Locator：Essay, additional excerpt 7 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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