“Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the matter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known; and partly because in reading it the second time one’s temper and mood are different so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light.” –Arthur Schopenhauer
“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” - Harry S. Truman
“The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat- footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.” - James N. Mattis
“Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddam page.” - Robert Caro in The Secrets of Lyndon Johnson’s Archives: On a Presidential Paper Trail
Chess master and tutor Bruce Pandolfini “is teaching [his students] how to think. ‘My goal,’ he says, ‘is to help them develop what I consider to be two of the most important forms of intelligence: the ability to read other people, and the ability to understand oneself.‘”
Li Lu on Charlie Munger: “When Charlie thinks about things, he starts by inverting. To understand how to be happy in life, Charlie will study how to make life miserable; to examine how business[es] become big and strong, Charlie first studies how businesses decline and die; most people care more about how to succeed in the stock market, Charlie is most concerned about why most have failed in the stock market. Charlie constantly collects and researches the notable failures in each and every type of people, business, government, and academia, and arranges the causes of failures into a decision-making checklist for making the right decisions. Because of this, he has avoided major mistakes in his decision making in his life and in his career. The importance of this on the performance of Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway over the past 50 years cannot be emphasized enough.”