Charlie Munger quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Charlie Munger on Wise Famous Quotes.

Trying to prioritize among things we're unlikely to do is pretty fruitless.

Those who will not face improvements because they are changes, will face changes that are not improvements.

If only I had the influence with my wife and children that I have in some other quarters!

The perfect example of Darwinism is what technology has done to businesses.

No CEO examining books today understands what the hell is going on.

Almost all good businesses engage in 'pain today, gain tomorrow' activities.

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

In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you've just described hell.

The more hard lessons you can learn vicariously rather than through your own hard experience, the better.

I'd rather throw a viper down my shirt front than hire a compensation consultant.

Being short and seeing a promoter take the stock up is very irritating. It's not worth it to have that much irritation in your life.

Anyone with an engineering frame of mind will look at [accounting standards] and want to throw up.

The normal expectancy of the average investor - for example, the pension funds of AT&T or IBM - is 6% for a long time.

Just as a man working with his tools should know its limitations, a man working with his cognitive apparatus must know its limitations.

I feel that by getting rich in the way I did, I think my own example has hurt my own country.

Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company's owners are slim at best.

If you have the opportunities of Berkshire, an investment in gold is dumb.

Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets - and can be lost in a heartbeat.

We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire.

The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It's the assets you have to worry about.

Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it's you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating.

The ethos of not fooling yourself is one of the best you could possibly have. It's powerful because it's so rare.

At Berkshire Hathaway we do not like to compete against Chinese manufacturers.

I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn't like it; indeed, especially when one doesn't like it.

In my life there are not that many questions I can't properly deal with using my $40 adding machine and dog-eared compound interest table.

Being an effective teacher is a high calling.

Hard work, honesty, if you keep at it, will get you almost anything.

It's simplicity itself that its future will be way worse than its past.

Opportunity comes to the prepared mind.

We have a history when things are really horrible of wading in when no one else will.

We have never had the will to enforce the immigration laws. What you see is what you'll continue to get.

I call myself the assistant cult leader.

Good businesses can survive a little bad management.

What's the best way to get a good spouse? The best single way is to deserve a good spouse because a good spouse is by definition not nuts.

If you always tell people why, they'll understand it better, they'll consider it more important, and they'll be more likely to comply.

Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.

There is bound to be a regression toward the mean.

The world is getting very much more competitive.

It's a rare business that doesn't have a way worse future than it has a past.

Avoid evil, particularly if they're attractive members of the opposite sex.

Litigation is notoriously time-consuming, inefficient, costly and unpredictable.

How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?

Once you get into debt, it's hell to get out. Don't let credit card debt carry over. You can't get ahead paying eighteen percent.

No wise pilot, no matter how great his talent and experience, fails to use his checklist.

Whoever makes you smarter a little earlier in life makes you better

I don't invest in what I don't understand. And I don't want to understand Facebook.

A director who gets $150,000 per year from a company and needs the money is not independent.

It's a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes.

The first chance you have to avoid a loss from a foolish loan is by refusing to make it; there is no second chance.

Just avoid things like racing trains to the crossing, doing cocaine, etc. Develop good mental habits.

We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.

I would argue that a majority of the horrors we face would not have happened if the accounting profession developed and enforced better accounting.

It's not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.

You've got to have models in your head and you've got to array you experience - both vicarious and direct - onto this latticework of mental models.

Capitalism is a pretty brutal place.

You must value the business in order to value the stock.

A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.

Don't confuse correlation and causation. Almost all great records eventually dwindle ...

If mutual fund directors are independent, then I'm the lead character in the Bolshoi Ballet.

There's more honor in investment management than in investment banking.

Just keep your head down and do your best.

Our biggest mistakes, were things we didn't do, companies we didn't buy.

The game of life is the game of everlasting learning. At least it is if you want to win.

I don't think vengeance is much good.

Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it.

The big money is not in the buying and selling ... but in the waiting.

Warren spends 70 hours a week thinking about investing .

Assume life will be really tough, and then ask if you can handle it. If the answer is yes, you've won.

The only intelligence investing is value investing ... to acquire more than one is paying for.

Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am.

For years I have read the morning paper and harrumphed. There's a lot to harrumph about now.

Most people are too fretful, they worry to much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it's time.

Wall Street has too much wealth and political power.

How do you compete against a true fanatic? You can only try to build the best possible moat and continuously attempt to widen it.

Berkshireis not as good as it was in terms of percentage compounding [going forward], but it's still a hell of a business.

It's not greed that drives the world, but envy.

The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.

We have a high moral responsibility to be rational

Determine value apart from price; progress apart from activity; wealth apart from size.

It takes character to sit there with all that cash and do nothing. I didn't get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.

The tax code gives you an enormous advantage if you can find some things you can just sit with.

There must be some wisdom in the folk saying: Its the strong swimmers who drown.

We tend to buy things - a lot of things - where we don't know exactly what will happen, but the outcome will be decent.

I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.

You have a real asset-price bubble in places like parts of California and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

What good is envy? It's the one sin you can't have any fun at.

How you behave in one place, will help in surprising ways later.

Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification.

Using volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return.

I think corporate managers should learn to be better investors because it would make them better managers.

Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.

The investment game is getting more and more competitive.

The interesting thing is the field is so big - it's enormous. One thing a modern civilization needs is energy.

Wrigley is a great business, but that doesn't solve the problem. Buying great businesses at advantageous prices is very tough.

The laws of thermodynamic s are such that if the water is getting warmer - and I believe it is - the energy of the weather is going to go up.

The only way to win is to work, work, work, work, and hope to have a few insights

If you skillfully follow the multidisciplinary path, you will never wish to come back. It would be like cutting off your hands.

I don't spend much time regretting the past, once I've taken my lesson from it. I don't dwell on it.

It's dishonourable to stay stupider than you need to be

See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.