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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
David Clark
a quote from Lee Kuan Yew himself: “With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries. . . . What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural background, my values are for a government which is honest, effective, and efficient.” And as prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990 he did just that: he created a government that was honest, effective, and efficient.
Lee’s book From Third World to First: The Singapore Story is well worth a read. Charlie became so enamored of Lee that he commissioned a bronze bust of him to keep the one he owns of Benjamin Franklin company.
“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day—if you live long enough—most people get what they deserve.”
“The best way to get a good spouse is to deserve a good spouse.”
Quality attracts quality, be it in business or in marriage.
“Know the big ideas in the big disciplines and use them routinely—all of them, not just a few.”
“Three rules for a career: (1) Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself; (2) Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire; and (3) Work only with people you enjoy.” – Career advice from Charlie is always a gift. Why don’t we sell things we would never buy? Because every book ever written on selling says that if we don’t like, understand, or believe in a product, we are going to be a disaster when we try to sell it. Great salespeople believe in their products. That is one of the secrets of their success. Why don’t we work for people we don’t respect? Because they have nothing to
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“I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.” – The problem here is one of trust. If people don’t have the integrity to admit when they don’t know something, how can one ever trust them? It is much better to jettison such a person and find someone with a bit more intellectual honesty.
“A big percentage of Caltech grads are going into finance. . . . They’ll make a lot of money by clobbering customers who aren’t as smart as them. It’s a mistake. I look at this in terms of losses from the diversion of our best talent going into some money-grubbing exercise.”
From Charlie’s perspective the best and brightest young minds should be engineering solutions to solve the world’s problems, not squandering their intellects on finding better ways to win a game of chance in a Wall Street casino.
“I like people admitting they were complete stupid horses’ asses. I know I’ll perform better if I rub my nose in my mistakes. This is a wonderful trick to learn.” – Charlie believes that we can learn from our failures only if we accept responsibility for them and examine exactly why we failed. Blaming someone else and shirking responsibility is a missed learning opportunity. That is why Berkshire’s annual report is always quick to point out Warren and Charlie’s screw-ups and the lessons they learned—such as their investment in US Airways, which they thought going in was a good investment but
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“There’s no way that you can live an adequate life without many mistakes. In fact, one trick in life is to get so you can handle mistakes. Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke.”
“Extreme specialization is the way to succeed. Most people are way better off specializing than trying to understand the world.” – Specialization is the key to survival in any species, and it is the key to success in any business. Specialization protects us from the competition. Why? Because specialization presents a barrier of entry to the competition—and the more difficult it is to become specialized, the greater the barrier. If all we do is what everyone else does, we will spend our lives competing head on with everyone else. But if we specialize in something and excel at it, the
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“It’s been my experience in life, if you just keep thinking and reading, you don’t have to work.” – Tired of that dead-end Wall Street job? Boss getting you down? Your derivatives book about to blow up and end your lucrative career? Just keep thinking and reading, and you will be all right.
“Mozart is a good example of a life ruined by nuttiness. His achievement wasn’t diminished—he may well have had the best innate musical talent ever—but from the start, he was pretty miserable. He overspent his income his entire life—that will make you miserable.”
“Any year that passes in which you don’t destroy one of your best loved ideas is a wasted year.” – Out with the old and in with the new. This shows an evolution in our thought process, which means we are actually thinking. What Charlie is saying is that in any year we haven’t tossed out one of our best-loved ideas, it probably means we aren’t reading and thinking enough to evolve a little bit further in our intellectual development.
Throwing out here could mean sharpening the axe…but be careful. Your counter argument should be just as well formed, if not better than, your supporting argument.
If a cherished idea hasn’t been personally criticized or tested against experience, then thats the one to put into the fire.
Another way to do this is to ask, for any idea you don’t throw out, “what would change my mind?” Write it down explicitly, and then check regularly to see how things change—whether you’re thinking is clear or needs revision based on new information.
