Charlie Munger Quotes

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

Reason is the servant of instinct.

At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.

Ironically, when a bunch of very smart people are sitting around a table for hours trying to figure out whether they should do something, that tends to not necessarily lead to the best results.

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

I also doubt a man can give really clear reasons for anything.

Most of the time you should use reason, there is no doubt about that because gut often makes us susceptible to lots of different biases, particularly if what you're deciding is something that you really, that expertise can be brought to bear on it, there is a way in which you can align the odds, so then you should really use reason.

In making our decisions, we must use the brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts, which He also gave us.

First with the head, then with the heart.

Organizational effectiveness does not lie in that narrow minded concept called rationality. It lies in the blend of clearheaded logic and powerful intuition

[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.

What does the brain matter compared with the heart?

Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.

by taking notice of those feelings and images that seemed to be in my blood and bones rather than in my head, I had found myself able to behave, not less reasonably, but more so. Apparently it was as much a false extreme to try and live by reason alone, leaving the passions out of count, as to ignore reason and put passion in its place as the guiding force of life.

In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea.

The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest view

Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.

Average people didn't analyze what they thought: they thought they thought, and half of it was gut reaction.

I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is pre-judgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.

We distrust our heart too much, and our head not enough.

By disregarding intuition in favor of science, or science in favor of instincts, we limit ourselves.

I'm supposed to be a scientific person but I use intuition more than logic in making basic decisions.

All my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.