Short Quotes

"All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there." Charlie Munger If there were only one concept that Charlie Munger were known for (as if that were possible) it is perhaps his concept of inversion - solving problems backwards by identifying and avoiding what would cause failure. If you excuse the crudeness, his abovementioned quote is a major example of this concept of inversion. How do you live? It is not possible to identify and/or prescribe to anoth

There is a misconception that you have to read voraciously and hungrily forever to get to the stage where you are able to be an investor. Who has the time? Who has the willingness to devote all their downtime to a second job? A Masters of Business Administration (MBA) for example, suggest that 2 whole years need to be dedicated to learning about business, before one is able to even start to do well in the same. This is notwithstanding that adults have to continue to feed the

The superior man does not waste himself on what is distant, on what is absent. He stands in the here and now, in the real situation. - Confucius Often we tend to emphasize the destination so much that we miss the journey. Stay in the present and enjoy life today. Blaise Pascal wrote: Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light i

Confucius said that real knowledge is knowing the extent of one’s ignorance. Aristotle and Socrates said the same thing. Is it a skill that can be taught or learned? It probably can, if you have enough of a stake riding on the outcome. Some people are extraordinarily good at knowing the limits of their knowledge, because they have to be. Think of somebody who’s been a professional tightrope walker for 20 years—and has survived. He couldn’t survive as a tightrope walker for 20

"READ This one's a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised at how many successful people check their outside interests at the door once they put their name and title on it. Keep your worldview as wide as possible. If you're in the widget business, it's not enough to know widgets. Celebrate your well-roundednessl Stay on top of public events and economic developments. Read at least two daily newspapers all the way through. Always have a book going. Learn a little bit about a

"Every morning, millions of Malaysians wake up surrounded by invisible fortunes; companies that generate 10x, 50x, even 100x returns for investors. Yet most people have no idea these wealth machines even exist. Meet Encik Rahman, a civil engineer in Kuala Lumpur. His day is about to reveal a secret: the greatest investment opportunities aren't always the ones with flashy logos or celebrity endorsements. They're hiding in plain sight, powering every moment of Malaysian life

"KEEP A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF If you bend to every demand, there'll be nothing left to justify the transaction. And yet if you demand everything, there'll be no transaction. There's a great episode of Taxi in which Louie De Palma, the character played by Danny DeVito, is given an opportunity to literally fill in a blank check to complete a deal, and he pulls out his few remaining hairs in coming up with a figure. He knows there's a number that will make his benef

"Embracing “I’m not sure” is difficult. We are trained in school that saying “I don’t know” is a bad thing. Not knowing in school is considered a failure of learning. Write “I don’t know” as an answer on a test and your answer will be marked wrong. Duke, Annie. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts (pp. 26-27). Penguin Publishing Group." Annie Duke argues that life (and investing) is a lot more akin to poker than it is to chess. Chess, r

"The Battle of Long Island was a disaster for George Washington’s army. His ten thousand troops were crushed by the British and its four-hundred-ship fleet. But it could have been so much worse. It could have been the end of the Revolutionary War. All the British had to do was sail up the East River and Washington’s cornered troops would have been wiped out. But it never happened, because the wind wasn’t blowing in the right direction and sailing up the river became impossibl