“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time—none, zero.”
Wise People Read
From “The Importance of Reading,” a passage in Poor Charlie’s Almanack (expanded third edition), Chapter 3, “Mungerisms: Charlie Unscripted,” a collection of Munger’s off-the-cuff remarks at Berkshire Hathaway and Wesco Financial annual meetings compiled by the investor Whitney Tilson.
In the same passage, Munger says both he and Warren Buffett read enormously, and that he is a biography nut who ties the big concepts to the lives of the people who developed them. His children, he adds, joke that he is “a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
Munger isn’t saying reading by itself makes you wise. Wisdom comes from learning from experience, and your own life only gives you so much. Reading lets you borrow everyone else’s experience too, so you learn from many lives instead of just one.