People calculate too much and think too little. - Charlie Munger

It is in the nature of things, as Jacobi knew, that many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backward. For instance, when almost everyone else was trying to revise the electromagnetic laws of [James Clerk] Maxwell8 to be consistent with the motion laws of Newton, Einstein9 discovered special relativity as he made a 180-degree turn and revised Newton’s laws to fit Maxwell’s.

You have to learn all the big ideas in the key disciplines in a way that they're in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life. If you do that, I solemnly promise you that one day you'll be walking down the street and you'll look to your right and left and you’ll think "my heavenly days, I'm now one of the few competent people in my whole age cohort." If you don't do it, many of the brightest of you will live in the middle ranks or in the shallows.

In my life, I avoid things that are stupid, evil, or make me look bad in comparison with someone else.