Why even smart people get bad results by Warren Buffett
It' ego, greed, envy, fear…It's mindless imitation of other people. I mean, there are a variety of factors that cause that horsepower of the mind to get diminished dramatically before the output turns out. And I would say if Charlie and I have any advantage it's not because we're so smart, it's because we're rational and we very seldom let extraneous factors interfere with our thoughts. We don't let other people's opinion interfere with it…we try to get fearful when others are greedy. We try to get greedy when others are fearful. We try to avoid any kind of imitation of other people's behavior. And those are the factors that cause smart people to get average to bad results.

I always look at IQ and talent as representing the horsepower of the motor, but in terms of output, the efficiency with which the motor works, depends on rationality. That's because a lot of people start out with 400-horsepower motor and get a hundred horsepower of output. So why do smart people do things that interfere with getting the output they're entitled to? It gets into the habits, and character and temperament, and it really gets into behaving in a rational manner. Not getting in your own way.

Intelligence test scores and marks in school are not always true indicators of the worth of a student, nor even the power of his intellect.

Through failures one becomes intelligent; but the one who has trained himself in this subject so that he can make others wise through their own failures, has used his intelligence. Ignorance is not stupidity.

The difference between stupid and intelligent people — and this is true whether or not they are well-educated — is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambigous or even contradictory situations — in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to...failure.

Everyone fails. Highly successful people fail many more times than the rest of the world and with much higher stakes at hand.

It’s possible that a not-so-smart person who can communicate well can do much better than a super-smart person who can’t communicate well. That is good news because it is much easier to improve your communication skills than your intelligence.

The difference is goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances ... by things that happen to them ... by exterior forces.

We tend to overrate the value of intelligence. You need to pair your IQ with other virtues. The most important things in life can not be attained through logic only.

The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments. And that is why we say that having a certain kind of temperament is more important than brains. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success.

Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because you’re faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs.

...it's not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.

it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.