We should be grateful that Mr. Munger, and Peter D. Kaufman, took the time to write this book and share it with the world.
You will upgrade your thinking and your brain by reading this book.
Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 5/5
Mindset: 5/5
Some of My Highlights:
- “That sounds funny, making friends among ‘the eminent dead.’ but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better for you in life and work better in education. It’s way better than just giving the basic concepts.”
- “I had long believed I had a social defect in my tendency to gain enthusiasm in the course of telling others what I thought they should know.”
- “And Cicero’s words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view.”
- “Cicero, learned man that he was, believed in self-improvement so long as breath lasts.”
- “To this end, he points out that Agamemnon in the war of Troy ‘never once wished for ten more men with the strength of Ajax but, instead, wanted the more with the wisdom of Nestor.'”
- “In this way Cicero is still being helpful more than two thousand years after Mark Anthony tried to rid the world of his influence.”
- “Father’s ability to Chinese wall off the most intrusive distractions from whatever mental task he engaged in -a practice alternatively amusing and irritating if you were trying to get his attention- accounts as much as anything else for his success.”
- “…but if he wants to offer serious counsel to one of his children, he is more likely to couch the message in an anecdote, preferably delivered in a group setting so that no one is singled out.”
- “The ‘self-taught’ statement is no exaggeration; he once said, ‘To this day, I have never taken any course, anywhere, in chemistry, economics, psychology, or business.'”
- “As Jesse Livermore said, ‘The big money is not in the buying and selling… but in the waiting.'”
- “It’s kind of fun to sit there and outthink people who are way smarter than you are because you’ve trained yourself to be more objective and more multidisciplinary. Furthermore, there is a lot of money in it, as can testify from my own personal experience.”
- “This habit of committing far more time to learning and thinking than to doing is no accident.”
- “Taking advantage of a cheap stock price on the stock exchange is one thing, but taking advantage of partners or old ladies is something else – something Charlie just doesn’t do.”
- “You ought to have an internal compass. SO there should be all kinds of things you won’t do even though they’re perfectly legal.”
- “Most people would look back and say their worst mistake was not firing someone soon enough.”
- “Really good investment opportunities aren’t going to come along too often and won’t last too long, so you’ve got to be ready to act. Have a prepared mind.”
- “If you take the best text in economics by Mankiw, he says intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs – in other words, it’s your alternatives that matter.”
- “Abraham Lincoln once asked: ‘How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.'”
- “There’s an important lesson here: Once wrongdoers get rich, they get enormous political power and you can’t stop it, so the key is to nip things like this in the bud.”
- “You must know the big ideas in the big disciplines and use them routinely – all of them, not just a few.”
- “Keynes said, ‘It’s not bringing in the new ideas that’s so hard. It’s getting rid of the old ones.'”
- “We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But that’s not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and ho sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.”