Charlie Munger on Creativity Quotes

"We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But that’s not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things."

"The most creative ideas come from cross-pollinating concepts from different fields."

"You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long time."

"A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they have terrible temperaments. You need a creative temperament."

"I think that time and again, in reality, the person who has the creative breakthrough is the person who is simply better prepared."

"Extreme patience combined with extreme decisiveness is the hallmark of the creative mind."

"Wisdom is just the ability to see the connections that others miss. That is what creativity is."

"You have to recognize the world as it is, not as you want it to be. That is the starting point of all creative problem solving."

"If you want to be a great thinker, you must be a great reader."

"You need to have a latticework of mental models in your head and you've got to hang your experience on it."

"The best way to be creative is to destroy your own best-loved ideas on a regular basis."

"The big ideas of the great disciplines have to be mastered. You can't just know them in a way that you can repeat them. You have to possess them."

"There is no better teacher than history in determining the future... There are answers worth billions of dollars in $30 history books."

"Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward."

"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You must avoid this if you want to be creative."

"The creative process is often just the process of removing the obstacles to clear thought."

"The best way to get what you want is to deserve what you want. This applies to creative success as well."

"If you don't get this elementary, but mildly unnatural, mathematics of elementary probability into your repertoire, then you go through a long life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest."

"It’s not enough to have a few ideas; you need to have a lot of ideas and then throw away the bad ones."

"Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification. So does great creative work."

"You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially those which challenge your most creative ideas."

"Avoid being a victim of 'Man with a Hammer' syndrome. It is the death of creativity."

"Most people are too narrow. They try to solve every problem with one tool. To be creative, you need a full toolkit."

"Creativity is often just a matter of having a better perspective than the next guy."

"The habit of committing a few hours every day to thinking is the most creative thing you can do for your career."

"I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in the classroom, which is natural. My family was into the books, and we were always surrounded by them."

"I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself."

"Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up."

"Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day."

"Darwin’s result was due in large measure to his working method, which violated all my rules for 'creativity' but worked."

"The best thing a human can do is to help another human being know more. That is how you build a creative society."

"Opportunity comes to the prepared mind. If you aren't prepared, you won't even see the creative opportunity."

"Simplicity has a way of improving performance by enabling us to better understand what we are doing."