Paul Graham：The Right Kind of Stubborn, Excerpt 1

Successful people tend to be persistent. New ideas often don't work at first, but they're not deterred. They keep trying and eventually find something that does. Mere obstinacy, on the other hand, is a recipe for failure. Obstinate people are so annoying. They won't listen. They beat their heads against a wall and get nowhere. But is there any real difference between these two cases? Are persistent and obstinate people actually behaving differently? Or are they doing the same thing, and we just label them later as persistent or obstinate depending on whether they turned out to be right or not? If that's the only difference then there's nothing to be learned from the distinction.

Source： https://paulgraham.com/persistence.html
Locator：Essay, additional excerpt 1 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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