40+ reasons I choose this super power
Last week we talked about the incredible learning machine Charlie Munger became. He optimized his schedule to sit in stillness to read, think, and learn, that allowed him to make incredibly astute and insightful decisions.
As leaders, we get paid to think and make decisions just like Munger did.
Building a practice around learning and getting a little bit better every day has become an obsession of mine.
I have started to appreciate that a leader's job is to treat one’s education like a job and I started asking myself how could I possibly expect the company I help lead to grow if I’m not growing?
I think there are many ways to learn and grow so I wanted to share a collection of 40+ reasons I choose to read!
If knowledge is power, then reading is a SUPERPOWER!
Onward,
Matt
Books hold the key to everything we’re trying to do. Reading is our compass, our guiding light—it’s what we owe our ultimate devotion. - Ryan Holiday
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. - Marcus Tullius Cicero
Books are the training weights of the mind - Epictetus
“A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting” - Walter Mosley
If you haven’t read hundreds of books,” Mattis says, “you’re functionally illiterate.” - General James Mattis
Leaders are readers - Harry Truman
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body and prayer is to the soul. We become the books we read. - Matthew Kelly
Books allow us to escape the tyranny of our own experience and benefit from the experiences of others. - Ryan Holiday
“‘No, you do have time, it’s far more important’... your world becomes a bigger world, and maybe there’s a moment in which you make connections.” - David Epstein
People died,” he said, speaking of slaves, soldiers and civil rights activists, “so I could have the ability to read.” - George Ravelling
Slave owners used to hide money in books because slaves didn’t no how to read. Teaching slaves how to read used to be against the law. – Ryan Holiday
To not read, to remain in ignorance, was not only to be weak, it was to ignore the people who had fought so hard, who had struggled at such great cost to read and to provide for future generations the right and the ability to do so. It was to spit in the face of Frederick Douglass, of Booker T. Washington, and, of course, of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mark Twain said, if you don’t read, you’re not any better than people who can’t read.
"Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work." - Jeniffer Egan
You could try to pound your head against the wall and think of original ideas or you can cheat by reading them in books." - Patrick collison
Marcus Aurelius talks about going “straight to the seat of intelligence.” That’s what books are. Epictetus found freedom from slavery, long before he was legally free. How? In the writings of the Stoics, in the words of Musonius Rufus. – Ryan Holiday
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” ~ George R.R. Martin
"Books are made to be broken in. They are quarries of gems to be mined, wells to be drawn from, sturdy posts to lean on, shoulders to cry on. Just as we never step in the same river twice, to paraphrase Marcus and Heraclitus, we never read a book the same way. That’s why we read and re-read, note and discuss, write and flag." - Ryan Holiday
You are what you eat and you are what you read. - Neil Parischa
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print." - Barbara Tuchman
Bismarck said, “Fools say they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others' experience.”
“To live the best life,” the Oracle told Zeno, “you should have conversations with the dead.”
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” - Dr Seuss
"If you love to read, or learn to love reading, you will have an amazing life. Period. Life will always have hardships, pressure, and incredibly annoying people, but books will make it all worthwhile. In books, you will find your North Star, and you will find you, which is why you are here. Books are paper ships, to all the worlds, to ancient Egypt, outer space, eternity, into the childhood of your favorite musician, and — the most precious stunning journey of all — into your own heart, your own family, your own history and future and body. Out of these flat almost two-dimensional boxes of paper will spring mountains, lions, concerts, galaxies, heroes. You will meet people who have been all but destroyed, who have risen up and will bring you with them. Books and stories are medicine, plaster casts for broken lives and hearts, slings for weakened spirits. And in reading, you will laugh harder than you ever imagined laughing, and this will be magic, heaven, and salvation. I promise." - Anne Lamott
A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books.” - Horace Mann
“Never trust a person with a TV bigger than their book shelf”
The true university of these days is a collection of books - Thomas Carlyle
An hour spent reading is one stolen from paraide - Thomas Wharton
All the secrets of the world are contained in books - Lemony Snicket
Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary - Jim Rohn
Reading (learning) is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else. - Naval Ravikant
The true university of these days is a collection of books - Thomas Carlyle
When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness - Vincent Starrett
A room without books is like a body without a soul - Cicero
The world belongs to those who read - Rick Holland
An hour spent reading is one stolen from Paradise - Thomas Wharton
All the secrets of the world are contained in books. - Lemony Snicket
Reading an hour a day is only 4% of your day. But that 4% will put you at the top of your field within 10 years. Find the time. - Patrick Bet-David
Those who don’t read great books are at no advantage over those who cannot read - mark Twain
I consider reading the greatest bargain in the world. A shelf of books is a shelf of many lives and ideas and imaginations which the reader can enjoy whenever he wishes and as often as he wishes. Instead of experiencing just one life, the book-lover can experience hundreds or even thousands of lives. He can live any kind of adventure in the world. Books are his time machine into the past and also into the future. Books are his "transporter" by which he can beam instantly to any part of the universe and explore what he finds there. Books are an instrument by which he can become any person for a while—a man, a woman, a child, a general, a farmer, a detective, a king, a doctor, anyone. - Gene Roddenberry
“Books can tell you almost everything that mankind knows. Or imagines.”— Liz Braswell
“And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.” - David McCullough
“Books, for example, the accrued capital of the human experience, all the wealth of the human mind, books help you think bigger and better, therefore you are bigger and better. You should read, then, all the time, wherever your interests take you. It’s too important not to.”