Readwise Highlights on Wisdom

Here are some of my Readwise highlights on Wisdom

Summary of Wisdom Highlights

The highlights define wisdom as knowing the right action at the right time, a result of metabolized mistakes, and an embodied experience. It is contrasted with mere knowledge, emphasizing that wisdom involves applying information, integrating diverse perspectives, and making choices even with incomplete data. Key aspects of wisdom include awareness, the ability to change opinions while upholding principles, knowing what to ignore, and understanding long-term consequences. Several highlights also connect wisdom to Stoic philosophy, emphasizing self-control, courage, justice, and the ability to control perceptions and actions. Ultimately, wisdom is presented as a continuous pursuit that leads to flourishing and better decision-making.

Highlights

• "Wisdom is knowing exactly what to do at the right time. If you have a very accurate map of your environment, so you can act decisively and correctly. Evolution rewards wisdom. Pursuit of wisdom is an end in itself, an infinite game. So it correlates with flourishing, happiness, connectedness, and meaning. It feels great." - KCP, Follow the White Rabbit

• "And when knowledge is no longer scarce, what remains valuable? Wisdom. You can get answers from AI, but how you use those answers takes wisdom. Wisdom is how to live. It is the residue of mistakes, metabolized by time and reflection. It can’t be rushed, and it can’t be copy-pasted. It is an embodied—as in felt in the body—experience, guidance from the inside." - Joe Hudson, Knowledge Work Is Dying—Here’s What Comes Next

• “Awareness, not age, leads to wisdom.” - Publius Syrus, Brain Food: Alone With the Gods

• "It's better to be the wisest person in the room than the smartest. People prove their intelligence by showing what they know. They reveal their wisdom by integrating what everyone knows. Intelligence can be used to advance personal agendas. Wisdom guides groups to shared goals." - Adam Grant, It's Better to Be the Wisest Person in the Room Than the Smartest.

• ""Knowledge is making the right choice with all the information. Wisdom is making the right choice without all the information."" - James Clear, 3-2-1: Knowledge vs. Wisdom, the Time to Worry, and How to Encourage Curiosity

• "Wisdom is not about coming up with new answers but to recognize at a deeper level the timelessness of the age-old answers and apply them." - Jawad Mian (@jsmian), Wisdom Is Not About Coming Up With New Answers but to Recognize at a Deeper Level the Timelessness of the Age-Old Answers and Apply Them.

• "We’re drowning in information but starving for wisdom. It’s tempting to think more information will lead to better understanding, but past a certain point, more input rarely means more insight. Constant consumption without reflection leaves us scattered, overwhelmed, and unfocused. In chasing every piece of information, we miss the wisdom hidden beneath the surface." - Greg McKeown, 1MW No. 226: Finding Wisdom, True Generosity, and Enhancing Human Connection With AI

• ""To attain knowledge add things every day. To attain wisdom subtract things every day." - Lao Tzu" - Greg McKeown

• "A mark of wisdom is being quick to change your opinions but slow to change your principles. It takes openness to update your views. It takes integrity to uphold your values. A key to growth is raising your understanding without lowering your standards." - Adam Grant, A Mark of Wisdom Is Being Quick to Change Your...

• "A large part of wisdom is knowing what to ignore. A large part of expertise is knowing where to place your attention. If you can master them, the seven tricks Feynman created will help you avoid a lot of errors." - FS (Farnam Street), Brain Food: Signal in the Noise

• "The curse of knowledge is that it closes your mind to what you don’t know. Good judgment depends on having the skill— and the will— to open your mind. A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of the most cherished parts of your identity.” - Adam Grant in Think Again, Brain Food: Attracting Luck, the High Cost of Distractions, and Personal Experience

• "There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”" - Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

• "In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins. Removing blind spots means we see, interact with, and move closer to understanding reality. We think better. And thinking better is about finding simple processes that help us work through problems from multiple dimensions and perspectives, allowing us to better choose solutions that fit what matters to us. The skill for finding the right solutions for the right problems is one form of wisdom." - Shane Parrish, Rhiannon Beaubien, The Great Mental Models

• "Knowledge is overrated. Wisdom is underrated. Intellect is overrated. Temperament is underrated. Outcome is overrated. Process is underrated. Short-term outperformance is overrated. Long-term…" - Gautam Baid, The Joys of Compounding

• "Changing your mind is not a sign of losing integrity. It's often a mark of gaining wisdom. Realizing you were wrong doesn't mean you lack judgment. It means you lacked knowledge. Opinions are what you think today. Growth comes from staying open to revising your views tomorrow." - Adam Grant, Changing Your Mind Is Not a Sign of Losing Integrity. It's Often a Mark of Gaining Wisdom.

• "The philosophy asserts that virtue (meaning, chiefly, the four cardinal virtues of self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom) is happiness, and it is our perceptions of things—rather than the things themselves—that cause most of our trouble. Stoicism teaches that we can’t control or rely on anything outside what Epictetus called our “reasoned choice”—our ability to use our reason to choose how to categorize, respond, and reorient ourselves to external events." - Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman, The Daily Stoic

• "When arguing from first principles, you are deliberately starting from scratch. You are explicitly avoiding the potential trap of conventional wisdom, which could turn out to be wrong. Even if you end up in agreement with conventional wisdom, by taking the first-principles approach, you will gain a much deeper understanding of the subject at hand." - Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann, Super Thinking

• "“There are three areas in which the person who would be wise and good must be trained. The first has to do with desires and aversions—that a person may never miss the mark in desires nor fall into what repels them. The second has to do with impulses to act and not to act—and more broadly, with duty—that a person may act deliberately for good reasons and not carelessly. The third has to do with freedom from deception and composure and the whole area of judgment, the assent our mind gives to its perceptions. Of these areas, the chief and most urgent is the first which has to do with the passions, for strong emotions arise only when we fail in our desires and aversions.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.2.1–3a" - Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman, The Daily Stoic

• "To become wise you’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models." - Scott E. Page, The Model Thinker

• "My notes from Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger turned into maxims: ... 4. Avoiding stupid mistakes is more important than being smart." - David Senra, My notes from Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom...