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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gautam Baid
Read between
December 17 - December 30, 2023
The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more. —Charlie Munger
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations. —Isaac Disraeli
More important than the will to win is the will to prepare. —Charlie Munger
The game of life is the game of everlasting learning. —Charlie Munger
“Learn from your mistakes, and the mistakes of others.”9
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. —Benjamin Franklin
Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day. —Charlie Munger
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. —René Descartes
Nassim Taleb, “Curiosity is antifragile, like an addiction; magnified by attempts to satisfy it.”
“Nothing so much assists learning as writing down what we wish to remember.”
The best way to achieve wisdom is to learn the big ideas that underlie reality…. Even people who aren’t geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits. —Charlie Munger
We know a lot more about what is wrong than what is right. What does not work (i.e., negative knowledge) is more robust than positive knowledge.
Upside potential is overrated. Downside protection is underrated.
Price-to-earnings ratio is overrated. Duration of competitive advantage period is underrated.
Being more frequently right than others is overrated. Being less wrong than others is underrated.
Competition with peers is overrated. Helping our peers is underrated.
Being the best investor is overrated. Being the most authentic version of yourself is underrated.
Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses—especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else. —Leonardo da Vinci
In Munger’s view, it is better to be worldly wise than to spend lots of time working with a single model that is precisely wrong. A multiple-model approach that is only approximately right will produce a far better outcome in anything that involves people or a social system. —Tren Griffin
The models that come from hard science and engineering are the most reliable models on this Earth.
…You have to realize the truth of biologist Julian Huxley’s idea that “Life is just one damn relatedness after another.” So you must have the models, and you must see the relatedness and the effects from the relatedness.
One of the advantages of a fellow like Buffett…is that he automatically thinks in terms of decision trees [emphasis added]. —Charlie Munger
Bertrand Russell rightly said, “Most people would rather die than think, and many of them do.”
“I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart.”14
fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. —Bruce Lee
Many people would see this as totally unproductive, but many of my best business solutions and money problem answers have come from periods of just sitting and thinking. —Warren Buffett
“In allocating capital, activity does not correlate with achievement. Indeed, in the fields of investments and acquisitions, frenetic behavior is often counterproductive.”
We don’t tell the ones we love how much we love them often enough because we assume there’s always tomorrow.
We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we have only one. —Confucius
One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching. —Gerard Way
I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit forming. —Warren Buffett
Of all forms of pride, perhaps the most desirable is a justified pride in being trustworthy. —Charlie Munger
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. —Voltaire
I’m no genius, but I’m smart in spots, and I stay around those spots. —Tom Watson
You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital [emphasis added].”
It’s not a competency if you don’t know the edge of it. —Charlie Munger
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
“The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”
As Charlie Munger says, “The goal of investment is to find situations where it is safe not to diversify.”5
“We try to stick to businesses we believe we understand. That means they must be relatively simple and stable in character. If a business is complex or subject to constant change, we’re not smart enough to predict future cash flows. Incidentally, that shortcoming doesn’t bother us.”9
Munger agrees: “We have a passion for keeping things simple. If something is too hard, we move on to something else. What could be more simple than that?”10
The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything. —Warren Buffett
Whose bread I eat, his song I sing. —Charlie Munger
“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t know.”
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor
The path to true success is through authenticity. —Guy Spier
Ben Graham’s words: “In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”
The only way to win is to work, work, work, work, and hope to have a few insights. —Charlie Munger
“The stocks that have been most rewarding to me have made their greatest gains in the third or fourth year I owned them.”
To make money in stocks, you need to have vision to see them, courage to buy them and patience to hold them. Patience is the rarest of the three. —Thomas Phelps
