Charlie Munger Quotes

if you do not appreciate the mathematics, you cannot see, among the great variety of facts, that logic permits you to go from one to the other

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

Being exposed to theory, stimulated by a basic love of concepts and mathematics, was a marvelous experience.

I'm a games and theory kind of guy. I love puzzles, so it was fun dissecting Shakespeare's prose.

The broader the chess player you are, the easier it is to be competitive, and the same seems to be true of mathematics - if you can find links between different branches of mathematics, it can help you resolve problems. In both mathematics and chess, you study existing theory and use that to go forward.

When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.

I have opinions that are based on the facts that are presented to me.

It is clear that I am a person who believes fundamentally in facts, evidence, data, and science, which supports decision-making and allows us to function as a society based on knowledge.

With method and logic one can accomplish anything.

Skepticism must go hand in hand with rationality. When theories are shown to be false, the correct thing to do is to move on.

My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.

It was while teaching philosophy that I saw how easily one can say ... what one wants to say. ... In fact, I became particularly aware if the dangers of speculation ... It's so much easier than digging out the facts. You sit in your office and build a system. But with my training in biology, I felt this kind of undertaking precarious.

A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub. (from a letter dated 25 May, 1694)

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take use all the way.

I have this real moron thing I do? It's called thinking.

It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

[Children] are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.

Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

...even professors of economics, to say nothing of the public, do not generally have scientific minds.