If someone breaks into your house or office to get that piece of paper, your problems are bigger than a compromised server.

But a piece of paper is easier to snatch than having your passwords written down nowhere - without stealing a whole wallet or breaking into houses.

If having your password on a note is good enough for Schneier ( http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_you... ), it's good enough for me. For pretty much the same reason. If you're going to even use a password, it should be a good one. And if it's a good one, you aren't very likely to be able to memorize it.

With upper and lower case and "1337" speak thrown in between and a few other characters replaced, it should not be that hard to come up with a decent enough password that you can even remember.

And why not a password manager instead of paper? Would be even better if it was one that reads your fingerprint or so.