Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty.It's not something you do just to advance in life...You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know.You're going to advance in life by what you learn after you leave here.
Confucious 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...
Another thing, of course, is that life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows.It doesn't matter.And some people recover and others don't…
In my whole life, I have known no wise people...who didn't read all the time --none, zero.You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads --at how much I read...They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.
Part of what you must learn is how to handle mistakes and new facts that change the odds.Life, in part, is like a poker game wherein you have to learn to quit sometimes when holding a much-loved hand.
A lot of people think if you just had more process and more compliance- checks and double-checks and so forth-you could create a better world.We just try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust and be careful of whom we trust.
Ninety-nine percent of the troubles that threaten our civilization come from too optimistic, therefore we should have a system where the accounting is a way more conservative.
We both (Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think.That is very uncommon in American business.We read and think.
I've seen so much folly and stupidity on the part of our major philanthropic groups, including the world bank.I really have more confidence in building up the more capitalistic ventures like Costco.
