Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Charlie Munger, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Charlie Munger quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 381 Charlie Munger quotes for you to read and share.

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The tradition of always looking for the answer in the most fundamental way available - that is a great tradition, and it saves a lot of time in this world. -- Charlie Munger
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You're not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you're going to learn after you leave here. -- Charlie Munger
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Well in the history of the See's Candy Company they always say, "I never did it before, and I'm never going to do it again." And we cashier them. It would be evil not to, because terrible behavior spreads. -- Charlie Munger
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I'm used to people with very high IQs knowing how to recognize reality, but there's a huge human tendency where it may be instructive to think that whatever you're doing to succeed is all right. -- Charlie Munger
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I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I've reached that state. -- Charlie Munger
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If you have competence, you know the edge. It wouldnt be a competence if you didnt know where the boundaries lie. Asking whether youve passed the boundary is a question that almost answers itself. -- Charlie Munger
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Missing out on some opportunity never bothers us. What's wrong with someone getting a little richer than you? It's crazy to worry about this ... -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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The normal expectancy of the average investor - for example, the pension funds of AT&T or IBM - is 6% for a long time. -- Charlie Munger
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There are a lot of things in life way more important than money. All that said, some people do get confused. I play golf with a man who says, " What good is health? You can't buy money with it." -- Charlie Munger
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A board member should be perfectly willing to leave at any time and willing to make the tough calls. -- Charlie Munger
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Kellogg's and Campbell's moats have also shrunk due to the increased buying power of supermarkets and companies like Wal-Mart. The muscle power of Wal-Mart and Costco has increased dramatically. -- Charlie Munger
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Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade. -- Charlie Munger
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Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime. -- Charlie Munger
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If we mix only a moderate minority share of turds with the raisins each year, probably no one will recognize what will ultimately become a very large collection of turds. -- Charlie Munger
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I think the idea that the hedge fund manager gets lower taxes than the taxi driver or the physics professor is insane. The legislators who leave that policy in place are derelict in their duties to be rational and fair. There are plenty of them in both political parties. It's totally outrageous. -- Charlie Munger
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You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best loved ideas. -- Charlie Munger
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I don't want to understand Facebook. -- Charlie Munger
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Avoid evil, particularly if they're attractive members of the opposite sex. -- Charlie Munger
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[GEICO] got to thinking that, because they were making a lot of money, they knew everything. And they suffered huge losses. All they had to do was to cut out all the folly and go back to the perfectly wonderful business that was lying there. -- Charlie Munger
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Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step - and in the end, you're a moral sewer. -- Charlie Munger
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We're the tortoise that has outrun the hare because it chose the easy predictions. -- Charlie Munger
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Although I am very interested in the subject of human misjudgment - and lord knows I've created a good bit of it - I don't think I've created my full statistical share, and I think that one of the reasons was I tried to do something about this terrible ignorance I left the Harvard Law School with. -- Charlie Munger
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Rationality is not just something you do so that you can make more money, it is a binding principle. Rationality is a really good idea. You must avoid the nonsense that is conventional in one's own time. It requires developing systems of thought that improve your batting average over time. -- Charlie Munger
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The average result has to be the average result. By definition, everybody can't beat the market. As I always say, the iron rule of life is that only 20% of the people can be in the top fifth. That's just the way it is. -- Charlie Munger
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I remember the $0.05 hamburger and a $0.40-per-hour minimum wage, so I've seen a tremendous amount of inflation in my lifetime. Did it ruin the investment climate? I think not. -- Charlie Munger
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A lot of our respected financial institutions are just casinos in drag. -- Charlie Munger
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Opportunity cost is a huge filter in life. If you've got two suitors who are really eager to have you and one is way the hell better than the other, you do not have to spend much time with the other. And that's the way we filter out buying opportunities. -- Charlie Munger
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Most people are too fretful, they worry to much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it's time. -- Charlie Munger
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I'm proud to be associated with the value system at Berkshire Hathaway; I think you'll make more money in the end with good ethics than bad. -- Charlie Munger
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[With] closet indexing ... you're paying a manager a fortune and he has 85% of his assets invested parallel to the indexes. If you have such a system, you're being played for a sucker. -- Charlie Munger
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Part of that, I think, is being able to tune out folly, as distinguished from recognizing wisdom. You've got whole categories of things you just bat away so your brain isn't cluttered with them. That way, you're better able to pick up a few sensible things to do. -- Charlie Munger
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I'm very pleased when the smartest people come [to the U.S.] and almost never pleased when the very bottom of the mental barrel comes in ... -- Charlie Munger
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I think that, every time you saw the word EBITDA, you should substitute the word "bullshit" earnings. -- Charlie Munger
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A lot of opportunities in life tend to last a short while, due to some temporary inefficiency ... For each of us, really good investment opportunities aren't going to come along too often and won't last too long, so you've got to be ready to act and have a prepared mind. -- Charlie Munger
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All sensible investing is value investing -- Charlie Munger
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There's no way that you can live an adequate life without making many mistakes. -- Charlie Munger
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I think the foundation at Berkshire [Buffett's stake in Berkshirewill pass to the Buffett Foundation upon his death] will be a plus because there will be a continuation of the culture. We'd still take in fine businesses run by people who love them. -- Charlie Munger
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A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail. -- Charlie Munger
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A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it. -- Charlie Munger
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My idea of a good place to shop is Costco - it has these heavily marbled fillet steaks. The idea of eating some wheat thing and washing it down with carrot juice has never appealed to me. -- Charlie Munger
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You could argue that [the decline of public schools] is one of the major disasters in our lifetimes. We took one of the greatest successes in the history of the earth and turned it into one of the greatest disasters in the history of the earth. -- Charlie Munger
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Wells Fargo behaves better than the average big bank. But nobody's perfect. -- Charlie Munger
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Everybody engaged in complex work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. -- Charlie Munger
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Berkshire was built on the eternal verities: basic mathematics, basic horse sense, basic fear, and basic diagnosis of human nature to make predictions regarding human behavior. We stuck to the basics with a certain amount of discipline and it has worked out quite well. -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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We have a history when things are really horrible of wading in when no one else will. -- Charlie Munger
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It's hard to predict what will happen with two brands in a market. Sometimes they will behave in a gentlemanly way, and sometimes they'll pound each other. I know of no way to predict whether they'll compete moderately or to the death. If you could figure it out, you could make a lot of money. -- Charlie Munger
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I think the notion that liquidity of tradable common stock is a great contributor to capitalism is mostly twaddle. The liquidity gives us these crazy booms, so it has as many problems as virtues. -- Charlie Munger
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The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want. -- Charlie Munger
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I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge. -- Charlie Munger
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There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.' At a certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.' -- Charlie Munger
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In Gillette's case, they keep surfing along new technology which is fairly simple by the standards of microchips. But it's hard for competitors to do. So they've been able to stay constantly near the edge of improvements in shaving. -- Charlie Munger
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The idea of caring is that someone is making money faster [than you are] is one of the deadly sins. Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There's a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley? -- Charlie Munger
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Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it's you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating. -- Charlie Munger
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When I run into a paradox I think either I'm a total horse's ass to have gotten to this point, or I'm fruitfully near the edge of my discipline. It adds excitement to life to wonder which it is. -- Charlie Munger
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I do not think you can trust bankers to control themselves. They are like heroin addicts. -- Charlie Munger
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We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think. -- Charlie Munger
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I don't invest in what I don't understand. And I don't want to understand Facebook. -- Charlie Munger
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If we've been a little more successful than other people, is because we always realised that the school of life was always open, and if you were not learning more you are falling behind. -- Charlie Munger
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They [Mc Donalds] take people and give them a first job, which enables them to get a second job. They do a very good job of educating troubled young people to be good citizens and they're probably more successful than charter schools. -- Charlie Munger
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Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. "They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate." -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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It never ceases to amaze me to see how much territory can be grasped if one merely masters and consistently uses all the obvious and easily learned principles. -- Charlie Munger
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Clever derivatives broke dozens of companies. It killed them. Bankrupt. We don't need these kinds of innovation in finance. It's OK to be boring in finance. What we want is innovation in widgets. -- Charlie Munger
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Common stock investors can make money by predicting the outcomes of practice evolution. You can't derive this by fundamental analysis - you must think biologically. -- Charlie Munger
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Assume life will be really tough, and then ask if you can handle it. If the answer is yes, you've won. -- Charlie Munger
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Let me know what your problem is, and I will try to make it more difficult for you. -- Charlie Munger
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I won't bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave. -- Charlie Munger
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I'd rather throw a viper down my shirt front than hire a compensation consultant. -- Charlie Munger
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The harder you work, the more confidence you get. But you may be working hard on something that is false. -- Charlie Munger
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Your life must focus on the maximization of objectivity. -- Charlie Munger
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Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs. -- Charlie Munger
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I find it quite useful to think of a free-market economy - or partly free market economy - as sort of the equivalent of an ecosystem. Just as animals flourish in niches, people who specialize in some narrow niche can do very well. -- Charlie Munger
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It's not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid. -- Charlie Munger
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I see almost no change in the price of the composite product that flows through Costco I don't feel sorry for the people who pay $27 million for an 8,000-square-foot condo in Manhattan. So inflation comes in places. -- Charlie Munger
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I'm right, and you're smart, and sooner or later you'll see I'm right. -- Charlie Munger
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The world of derivatives is full of holes that very few people are really aware of. It's like hydrogen and oxygen sitting on the corner waiting for a little flame. -- Charlie Munger
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A few public hangings will really change behavior. One of our Presidents said if he could execute three people each year for no cause, it would make it a lot easier to govern. When someone said that's not enough, he said, "Oh yes it is, because I'd publish the list of people under consideration." -- Charlie Munger
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How do you compete against a true fanatic? You can only try to build the best possible moat and continuously attempt to widen it. -- Charlie Munger
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There has never been a master plan. Anyone who wanted to do it, we fired because it takes on a life of its own and doesn't cover new reality. We want people taking into account new information. -- Charlie Munger
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I feel that by getting rich in the way I did, I think my own example has hurt my own country. -- Charlie Munger
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While no real money came down, my family gave me a good education and a marvelous example of how people should behave, and in the end that was more valuable than money. Being surrounded by the right values from the beginning is an immense treasure. Warrenhad that. It even has a financial advantage. -- Charlie Munger
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Good businesses can survive a little bad management. -- Charlie Munger
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The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It's such a simple idea. It's the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. -- Charlie Munger
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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. Nobody's that smart. -- Charlie Munger
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I've heard that one-half of the students at elite schools want to go into private equity or hedge funds. They want to keep up with their age cohorts at Goldman. This can't possibly end well in terms of meeting these expectations. -- Charlie Munger
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It's in the nature of stock markets to go way down from time to time. There's no system to avoid bad markets. You can't do it unless you try to time the market, which is a seriously dumb thing to do. Conservative investing with steady savings without expecting miracles is the way to go. -- Charlie Munger
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The basic concept of value to a private owner and being motivated when you're buying and selling securities by reference to intrinsic value instead of price momentum - I don't think that will ever be outdated. -- Charlie Munger
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If you don't keep learning, other people will pass you by. Temperament alone won't do it - you need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time. -- Charlie Munger
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To me, it's obvious that the winner has to bet very selectively. It's been obvious to me since very early in life. I don't know why it's not obvious to very many other people. -- Charlie Munger
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I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest
sometimes not even the most diligent. But they are learning machines; they go to bed every night a little wiser than when they got up. And, boy, does that habit help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you. -- Charlie Munger
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Since mistakes of omission don't appear in the financial statements, most people don't pay attention to them. We rub our noses in mistakes of omission - as we just did. -- Charlie Munger
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The quality of the medical care delivered, including the pharmaceutical industry, has improved a lot. I don't think it's crazy for a rich country like the USto spend 15% of GDP on healthcare, and if it rose to 16-17%, it's not a big worry. -- Charlie Munger
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Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better. -- Charlie Munger
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If you skillfully follow the multidisciplinary path, you will never wish to come back. It would be like cutting off your hands. -- Charlie Munger
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In the 1930s, there as a stretch here you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's hat's going on in today's private-equity world. -- Charlie Munger
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It takes almost no capital to open a new See's candy store. We're drowning in capital of our own that has almost no cost. It would be crazy to franchise stores like some capital-starved pancake house. We like owning our own stores as a matter of quality control. -- Charlie Munger
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After nearly making a terrible mistake not buying See's, we've made this mistake many times. We are apparently slow learners. These opportunity costs don't show up on financial statements, but have cost us many billions. -- Charlie Munger
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You'll better understand the evil when top audit firms started selling fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you that one told me that they're better [than the others] because they only sold [the schemes] to their top-20 clients, so no-one would notice. -- Charlie Munger
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The game is to keep learning, and I don't think people are going to keep learning who don't like the learning process. -- Charlie Munger
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We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire. -- Charlie Munger
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Gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but I think civilized people don't buy gold, they invest in productive businesses. -- Charlie Munger
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I don't spend much time regretting the past, once I've taken my lesson from it. I don't dwell on it. -- Charlie Munger
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Avoid working directly under somebody you don't admire and don't want to be like. -- Charlie Munger
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Quoting Demosthenes, 'For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.' I would rather make money playing a piano in a whorehouse than arguing that no cost is incurred when employees are paid in stock options instead of cash. I am not kidding. -- Charlie Munger
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Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom. -- Charlie Munger
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Wrigley is a great business, but that doesn't solve the problem. Buying great businesses at advantageous prices is very tough. -- Charlie Munger
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I believe Costco does more for civilization than the Rockefeller Foundation. I think it's a better place. You get a bunch of very intelligent people sitting around trying to do good, I immediately get kind of suspicious and squirm in my seat. -- Charlie Munger
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Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant. -- Charlie Munger
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Darwin paid particular attention to disconfirming evidence. Objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you're going to be a great thinker. -- Charlie Munger
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Those who keep learning, will keep rising in life -- Charlie Munger
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As I continued through Cicero's pages, I found much more material celebrating my way of life ... -- Charlie Munger
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Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean. -- Charlie Munger
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We have to have a special insight, or we'll put it in the 'too tough' basket. All of you have to look for a special area of competency and focus on that. -- Charlie Munger
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The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It's the assets you have to worry about. -- Charlie Munger
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Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well. -- Charlie Munger
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I think the main figure that matters to all of us, including people in the media, is: How does GDP per capita grow? And those figures have been very good. There is a huge flux both up and down, so it isn't like we're all static in status. What's important is that pie grows. -- Charlie Munger
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To say accounting for derivatives is Americais a sewer is an insult to sewage. -- Charlie Munger
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You need to have a passionate interest in why things are happening. That cast of mind, kept over long periods, gradually improves your ability to focus on reality. If you don't have the cast of mind, you're destined for failure even if you have a high I.Q. -- Charlie Munger
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Over many decades, our usual practice is that if something we like goes down, we buy more and more. Sometimes something happens, you realize you're wrong, and you get out. But if you develop correct confidence in your judgment, buy more and take advantage of stock prices. -- Charlie Munger
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There is bound to be a regression toward the mean. -- Charlie Munger
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There are always people who will be better at some thing than you are. -- Charlie Munger
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If all you succeed in doing in life is getting rich by buying little pieces of paper, it's a failed life. Life is more than being shrewd in wealth accumulation. -- Charlie Munger
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We've got great flexibility and a certain discipline in terms of not doing some foolish thing just to be active - discipline in avoiding just doing any damn thing just because you can't stand inactivity. -- Charlie Munger
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I've been associated with Warren ( Buffett) so long, I thought I'd be just a footnote. -- Charlie Munger
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Here's one truth that perhaps your typical investment counselor would disagree with: if you're comfortably rich and someone else is getting richer faster than you by, for example, investing in risky stocks, so what?! Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy. -- Charlie Munger
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Berkshire's past record has been almost ridiculous. If Berkshirehad used even half the leverage of, say, Rupert Murdoch, it would be five times its current size. -- Charlie Munger
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Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke. You've made an enormous commitment to something.You've poured effort and money in. And the more you put in, the more that the whole consistency principle makes you think. -- Charlie Munger
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We don't have an isolated group [of senior managers] surrounded by servants. Berkshire's headquarters is a tiny little suite. We just came back from Berkshire's board meeting; it had moved up to the board room of the Kiewit company and [it was so large and luxurious that] I felt uncomfortable. -- Charlie Munger
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The cost of being a publicly traded stock has gone way, way up. It doesn't make sense for a little company to be public anymore. A lot of little companies are going private to be rid of these burdensome requirements ... -- Charlie Munger
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Wall Street has too much wealth and political power. -- Charlie Munger
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One could imagine a period like Japan13 years ago, however, in which indexing over time wouldn't work. -- Charlie Munger
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You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, 'Here are three things.' You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life. -- Charlie Munger
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Well, the questioner came from Singapore which has perhaps the best economic record in the history of developing an economy and therefore he referred to 15% per annum as modest. It's not modest-it's arrogant. Only someone from Singapore would call it modest. -- Charlie Munger
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Step by step you get ahead, but rarely in fast spurts. -- Charlie Munger
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Of course the self-serving bias is something you want to get out of yourself. Thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on this subconscious tendency to serve one's self is a terribly inaccurate way to think. -- Charlie Munger
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I don't want to sell credit to people who are going to hurt themselves with it. You should only sell products that are good for the people who use them. Some disagree with this, but I know I'm right. That is to say, you're talking to a Republican who admires Elizabeth Warren. -- Charlie Munger
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Recognize reality even when you don't like it-especially when you don't like it. -- Charlie Munger
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The SEC does way more good than harm - the last thing I would do is get rid of the SEC ... if accounting were thoroughly fixed, a lot of other sins would go away. We're paying a huge price for deterioration of accounting. -- Charlie Munger
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We bought a doomed textile mill [Berkshire Hathaway] and a California S&L [Wesco] just before a calamity. Both were bought at a discount to liquidation value. -- Charlie Munger
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Any time anybody offers you anything with a big commission and a 200-page prospectus, don't buy it. Occasionally, you'll be wrong if you adopt "Munger's Rule". However, over a lifetime, you'll be a long way ahead-and you will miss a lot of unhappy experiences. -- Charlie Munger
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Black-Scholes works for short-term options, but if it's a long-term option and you think you know something [about the underlying asset], it's insane to use Black-Scholes. -- Charlie Munger
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A director who gets $150,000 per year from a company and needs the money is not independent. -- Charlie Munger
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The best armor of old age is a well-spent life preceding it. -- Charlie Munger
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By regularly reading business newspaper and magazines I am exposed to an enormous amount of material at the micro level.. I find that what I see going on there pretty much informs me about what's happening at the macro level. -- Charlie Munger
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A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc. -- Charlie Munger
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If all you needed to do is to figure out what company is better than others, everyone would make a lot of money. But that is not the case. They keep raising the prices to the point when the odds change. -- Charlie Munger
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It's been my experience in life if you just keep thinking and reading, you don't have to work. -- Charlie Munger
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Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. -- Charlie Munger
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Stock-picking is like gambling: those who win well, seldom bet, but when they do, they bet heavily. -- Charlie Munger
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If you can get good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift. -- Charlie Munger
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If you don't allow for self-serving bias in the conduct of others, you are, again, a fool. -- Charlie Munger
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For some odd reason, I had an early and extreme multidisciplinary cast of mind. I couldn't stand reaching for a small idea in my own discipline when there was a big idea right over the fence in somebody else's discipline. So I just grabbed in all directions for the big ideas that would really work. -- Charlie Munger
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If the value of a company doesn't just scream out at you, it's too close. -- Charlie Munger
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Bull markets go to people's heads. If you're a duck on a pond, and it's rising due to a downpour, you start going up in the world. But you think it's you, not the pond. -- Charlie Munger
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All man's desired geometric progressions, if a high rate of growth is chosen, at last come to grief on a finite earth. And the social system for man on earth is fair enough, eventually, that almost all massive cheating ends in disgrace. -- Charlie Munger
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I have a black belt in chutzpah. I was born with it. Some people, like some of the women I know, have a black belt in spending. They were born with that. But what they gave me was a black belt in chutzpah. -- Charlie Munger
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To atone, I teach and try to set an example ... I love spreading this stuff around. Just because it's trite doesn't mean it isn't right. In fact, I like to say, 'If it's trite, it's right.' -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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Accounting is a big subject and there are huge forces in play. The entire momentum of existing thinking and existing custom is in a direction that allows terrible follies to happen, and the terrible follies have terrible consequences. -- Charlie Munger
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It would be one of the most irritating experiences in the world to do a lot of work to uncover a fraud and then at have it go from X to 3X and at h the crooks happily partying with your money while you're meeting margin calls. Why would you want to go within hailing distance of that? -- Charlie Munger
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A foreign correspondent, after talking to me for a while, once said: "You don't seem smart enough to be so good at what you're doing. Do you have an explanation?" -- Charlie Munger
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In engineering, people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don't give a damn about safety. They let it balloon and balloon and balloon. It's aided by false accounting. -- Charlie Munger
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The Internet bubble circa 2000 is the most extreme in modern capitalism. In the 1930s, we had the worst depression in 600 years. Today is almost as extreme in the opposite way. -- Charlie Munger
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Our biggest mistakes, were things we didn't do, companies we didn't buy. -- Charlie Munger
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Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer. -- Charlie Munger
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Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am. -- Charlie Munger
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Suppose you were a real estate investor with a 1/3 interest in the best apartment complex in town, the best mall, and the best office building. Would you feel like a poor, undiversified investor? No! But as soon as you get into stocks, people feel this way. Partly, people need to justify their fees. -- Charlie Munger
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The theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you're going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education. -- Charlie Munger
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Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay were caricatures - they were easy to spot. They were almost psychopaths. But it's much harder to spot problems at companies like Royal Dutch [Shell]. -- Charlie Munger
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Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition. -- Charlie Munger
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Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome -- Charlie Munger
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Expect hogs to eat a lot more in the presence of a lot of hog wash. -- Charlie Munger
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How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn't behavioral, what the hell is it? -- Charlie Munger
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Cicero's words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view. -- Charlie Munger
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There's more honor in investment management than in investment banking. -- Charlie Munger
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I think you'll make more money in the end with good ethics than bad. Even though there are some people who do very well, like Marc Rich-who plainly has never had any decent ethics, or seldom anyway. But in the end, Warren Buffett has done better than Marc Rich-in money-not just in reputation. -- Charlie Munger
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The total amount paid out in dividends is roughly equal to the amount lost in trading and investment advice, so net dividends to shareholders are zero. This is a very peculiar way to run a republic. -- Charlie Munger
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I bet Richard Fuld doesn't have an ounce of contrition. It's just megalomania. When it's like that, you need rules to prevent catastrophe. When banks are borrowing the government's credit rating, you need rules to prevent stupid things. -- Charlie Munger
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People always underestimate the ability of earth to increase its carrying capacity. -- Charlie Munger
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It's dishonourable to stay stupider than you need to be -- Charlie Munger
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I think it would be a great improvement if there were no D&O insurance . The counter-argument is that no-one with any money would serve on a board. But I think net net you'd be better off. -- Charlie Munger
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Even if you assume that the whole economy would work better had we never had double taxation, having the envy and resentment of the richest paying low or no taxes screams of injustice. You have to have a fair system. -- Charlie Munger
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Fancy computers are engaging in legalized front-running. The profits are clearly coming from the rest of us - our college endowments and our pensions. Why is this legal? What the hell is the government thinking? It's like letting rats into a restaurant. -- Charlie Munger
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The number one idea is to view a stock as an ownership of the business and to judge the staying quality of the business in terms of its competitive advantage. Look for more value in terms of discounted future cash-flow than you are paying for. Move only when you have an advantage. -- Charlie Munger
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We've had the most massive creation of wealth for people a lot younger than those who formerly got wealth in the history of the world. The world is full of young people who really want to get rich, and when I left school nobody thought it was a reasonable possibility. -- Charlie Munger
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I know just enough about thermodynamics to understand that if it takes too much fossil-fuel energy to create ethanol, that's a very stupid way to solve an energy problem. -- Charlie Munger
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Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it. -- Charlie Munger
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A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another. -- Charlie Munger
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It's human nature to extrapolate the recent past into the future, but it's terrible that managements go along with this. -- Charlie Munger
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Berkshireis in the business of making easy predictions If a deal looks too hard, the partners simply shelve it. -- Charlie Munger
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Accounting incomes were reduced by discrepancy [ but] the net amount paid by lawyers for lawyerly discrepancy is close to zippo. In this case, the goddess of justice was blind. -- Charlie Munger
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If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we'd have a pretty average record. It wasn't hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along, you pounced on them with vigor. -- Charlie Munger
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You have a real asset-price bubble in places like parts of California and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. -- Charlie Munger
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You have to realize the truth of biologist Julian Huxley's idea that 'Life is just one damn relatedness after another' So you must have the models, and you must see the relatedness and the effects from the relatedness. -- Charlie Munger
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The whole concept of dividing it up into 'value' and 'growth' strikes me as twaddle. It's convenient for a bunch of pension fund consultants to get fees prattling about and a way for one advisor to distinguish himself from another. But, to me, all intelligent investing is value investing. -- Charlie Munger
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What good is envy? It's the one sin you can't have any fun at. -- Charlie Munger
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The big money is not in the buying and selling ... but in the waiting. -- Charlie Munger
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One of the smartest things a person can do is dampen investment expectations, especially with Berkshire. That would be mature and responsible. I like our model and we should do nicely -- Charlie Munger
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If it happens every year like clockwork, what's so extraordinary about it? -- Charlie Munger
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I think corporate managers should learn to be better investors because it would make them better managers. -- Charlie Munger
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The beauty of a financial institution is that there are a lot of ways to go to hell in a bucket. You can push credit too far, do a dumb acquisition, leverage yourself excessively - it's not just derivatives [that can bring about your downfall]. -- Charlie Munger
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Early Charlie Munger is a horrible career model for the young because not enough was delivered to civilization in return for what was wrested from capitalism. And other similar career models are even worse. -- Charlie Munger
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One metric catches people. We prefer businesses that drown in cash. An example of a different business is construction equipment. You work hard all year and there is your profit sitting in the yard. We avoid businesses like that. We prefer those that can write us a check at the end of the year. -- Charlie Munger
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A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price. -- Charlie Munger
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The interesting thing is the field is so big - it's enormous. One thing a modern civilization needs is energy. -- Charlie Munger
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Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group then to hell with them. -- Charlie Munger
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You must value the business in order to value the stock. -- Charlie Munger
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I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it. -- Charlie Munger
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For years I have read the morning paper and harrumphed. There's a lot to harrumph about now. -- Charlie Munger
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I think we have some special talents. That being said, I think it's dangerous to rely on special talents - it's better to own lots of monopolistic businesses with unregulated prices. But that's not the world today. We have made money exercising our talents and will continue to do so. -- Charlie Munger
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What matters most: passion or competence that was born in? Berkshireis full of people who have a peculiar passion for their own business. I would argue passion is more important than brain power. -- Charlie Munger
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Berkshireis not as good as it was in terms of percentage compounding [going forward], but it's still a hell of a business. -- Charlie Munger
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It's natural that you'd have more brains going into money management. There are so many huge incomes in money management and investment banking - it's like ants to sugar. There are huge incentives for a man to take up money management as opposed to, say, physics, and it's a lot easier. -- Charlie Munger
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The investment game is getting more and more competitive. -- Charlie Munger
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Anyone with an engineering frame of mind will look at [accounting standards] and want to throw up. -- Charlie Munger
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The old culture had come out of poverty, out of English customs. -- Charlie Munger
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Some important factor doesn't lose its "share of force" just because some "expert" can better measure other types of force. -- Charlie Munger
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The perfect example of Darwinism is what technology has done to businesses. -- Charlie Munger
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The first chance you have to avoid a loss from a foolish loan is by refusing to make it; there is no second chance. -- Charlie Munger
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When you borrow a man's car, always return it with a tank of gas. -- Charlie Munger
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There must be some wisdom in the folk saying: Its the strong swimmers who drown. -- Charlie Munger
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The game of investing is one of making better predictions about the future than other people. How are you going to do that? One way is to limit your tries to areas of competence. If you try to predict the future of everything, you attempt too much. -- Charlie Munger
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Just as a man working with his tools should know its limitations, a man working with his cognitive apparatus must know its limitations. -- Charlie Munger
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I always like it when someone attractive to me agrees with me, so I have fond memories of Phil Fisher. The idea that it was hard to find good investments, so concentrate in a few, seems to me to be an obviously good idea. But 98% of the investment world doesn't think this way. -- Charlie Munger
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See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought. -- Charlie Munger
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I believe that we are at or near the apex of a great civilization ... In 50-100 years, if we're a poor third to some countries in Asia, I wouldn't be surprised. If I had to bet, the part of the world that will do best will be Asia. -- Charlie Munger
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Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don't design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting. -- Charlie Munger
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Our success has come from the lack of oversight we've provided, and our success will continue to be from a lack of oversight. But if you're going to provide minimal oversight, you have to buy carefully. It's a different model from GE's. GE's works - it's just very different from ours. -- Charlie Munger
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There is the sheer amount of Franklin's wisdom. And the talent. Franklin played four instruments. He was the nation's leading scientist and inventor, plus a leading author, statesman, and philanthropist. There has never been anyone like him. -- Charlie Munger
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If you want to understand science, you have to understand math. In business, if you're enumerate, you're going to be a klutz. The good thing about business is that you don't have to know any higher math ... -- Charlie Munger
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Like the stocks of both Berkshire and Wesco to trade within hailing distance of what we think of as intrinsic value. When it runs up, we try to talk it down. That's not at all common in Corporate America, but that's the way we act. -- Charlie Munger
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At Berkshire Hathaway we do not like to compete against Chinese manufacturers. -- Charlie Munger
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The reason we avoid the word 'synergy' is because people generally claim more synergistic benefits than will come. Yes, it exists, but there are so many false promises.Berkshire is full of synergies - we don't avoid synergies, just claims of synergies. -- Charlie Munger
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I'm a bull on Berkshire Hathaway. There may be some considerable waiting, but I think there are some good days ahead. -- Charlie Munger
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If you have the opportunities of Berkshire, an investment in gold is dumb. -- Charlie Munger
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The stupid and dishonest accountants allowed the genie of totally inappropriate accounting to descend on derivatives books. And once this has happened - people get status, etc. - it's impossible to get it back into the bottle. -- Charlie Munger
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Why would you want to invest with a guy whose thought process says, If a second layer of fees is good, then let's add a third layer. -- Charlie Munger
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The definition of hell in the legal system is: endless due process and no justice; (in the corporate world) it would be: endless due diligence and no horse sense. -- Charlie Munger
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I don't think vengeance is much good. -- Charlie Munger
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I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span. -- Charlie Munger
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Three rules for a career: 1) Don't sell anything you wouldn't buy yourself; 2) Don't work for anyone you don't respect and admire; and 3) Work only with people you enjoy. -- Charlie Munger
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It took us months of buying all the Coke stock we could to accumulate $1 billion worth - equal to 7% of the company. It's very hard to accumulate major positions. -- Charlie Munger
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We may well have a competitive advantage buying decent businesses at decent prices. But they won't be fabulous businesses and fabulous prices. There's too much competition and money out there, with many buyout specialists. -- Charlie Munger
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It would be nice if this [finding really cheap stocks] happened all the time. Unfortunately, it doesn't. -- Charlie Munger
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Some people seem to think there's no trouble just because it hasn't happened yet. If you jump out the window at the 42nd floor and you're still doing fine as you pass the 27th floor, that doesn't mean you don't have a serious problem. I would want to address the problem right now. -- Charlie Munger
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The game of life is the game of everlasting learning. At least it is if you want to win. -- Charlie Munger
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In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables - like the discount warehouses of Costco. -- Charlie Munger
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Litigation is notoriously time-consuming, inefficient, costly and unpredictable. -- Charlie Munger
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It's a rare business that doesn't have a way worse future than it has a past. -- Charlie Munger
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If you can buy the best companies, over time the pricing takes care of itself. -- Charlie Munger
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Move only when you have an advantage. It's very basic. You have to understand the odds and have the discipline to bet only when the odds are in your favor. -- Charlie Munger
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If the same family were always on the bottom, then you'd have big resentments. But if DuPonts go down and Pampered Chef up, [that's good]. That much churn makes people think the system is fairer. Buffett: We don't like churn now, but we liked it more 30-40 years ago. -- Charlie Munger
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In the LBO field there is a buried "covariance" with marketable equities, toward disaster in generally bad business conditions, and competition is now extremely intense. -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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We tend to buy things - a lot of things - where we don't know exactly what will happen, but the outcome will be decent. -- Charlie Munger
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I like people admitting they were complete stupid horses' asses. I know I'll perform better if I rub my nose in my mistakes. This is a wonderful trick to learn. -- Charlie Munger
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Most people will see declining returns [due to inflation]. One of the great defenses if you're worried about inflation is not to have a lot of silly needs in your life - you don't need a lot of material goods. -- Charlie Munger
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If you buy something because it's undervalued, then you have to think about selling it when it approaches your calculation of its intrinsic value. That's hard. But if you buy a few great companies, then you can sit on your ass. That's a good thing. -- Charlie Munger
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To some extent, stocks are like Rembrandts. They sell based on what they've sold in the past. Bonds are much more rational. No-one thinks a bond's value will soar to the moon. -- Charlie Munger
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It's waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can't stand to wait. If you didn't get the deferred-gratification gene, you've got to work very hard to overcome that. -- Charlie Munger
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The more hard lessons you can learn vicariously rather than through your own hard experience, the better. -- Charlie Munger
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Trying to prioritize among things we're unlikely to do is pretty fruitless. -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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If mutual fund directors are independent, then I'm the lead character in the Bolshoi Ballet. -- Charlie Munger
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The idea of excessive diversification is madness. -- Charlie Munger
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It's not a competency if you don't know the edge of it. -- Charlie Munger
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When it gets into these spikes, with shortages and uproar and so forth, people go bananas, but that's capitalism. -- Charlie Munger
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Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world. -- Charlie Munger
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You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don't grab the right ideas or don't know what to do with them. -- Charlie Munger
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There are all kinds of wonderful new inventions that give you nothing as owners except the opportunity to spend a lot more money in a business that's still going to be lousy. The money still won't come to you. All of the advantages from great improvements are going to flow through to the customers. -- Charlie Munger
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It's a finite and very competitive world. All large aggregations of capital eventually find it hell on earth to grow and thus find a lower rate of return. -- Charlie Munger
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If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question (of whether you are past the boundary) is to answer it. -- Charlie Munger
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Mankind invented a system to cope with the fact that we are so intrinsically lousy at manipulating numbers. It's called the graph. -- Charlie Munger
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We're partial to putting out large amounts of money where we won't have to make another decision. -- Charlie Munger
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If you, like me, lived through 1973-74 or even the early 1990s ... There was a waiting list to get OUT of the country club - that's when you know things are tough. If you live long enough, you'll see it. -- Charlie Munger
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Even in pure mathematics they can't remove all paradox, and the rest of us should also recognize we are going to have to endure a lot of paradox, like it or not. -- Charlie Munger
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No CEO examining books today understands what the hell is going on. -- Charlie Munger
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I think liberal art faculties at major universities have views that are not very sound, at least on public policy issues - they may know a lot of French however. -- Charlie Munger
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If you want good behavior, don't pay on a commission basis. Our judges aren't paid so much a case. We keep them pretty well isolated with a fixed salary. Judges in this whole thing have come out pretty well - there have been relatively few scandals. -- Charlie Munger
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Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification. -- Charlie Munger
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How you behave in one place, will help in surprising ways later. -- Charlie Munger
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I think track records are very important. If you start early trying to have a perfect one in some simple thing like honesty, you're well on your way to success in this world. -- Charlie Munger
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Most people early achieve and later intensify a tendency to process new and disconfirming information so that any original conclusion remains intact. They become people of whom Philip Wylie observed: "You couldn't 't squeeze a dime between what they already know and what they will never learn." -- Charlie Munger
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Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives. -- Charlie Munger
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Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things. -- Charlie Munger
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If it is wisdom you're after, you're going to spend a lot of time on your ass reading. -- Charlie Munger
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The only intelligence investing is value investing ... to acquire more than one is paying for. -- Charlie Munger
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We have a passion for keeping things simple. -- Charlie Munger
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In fact I've probably never seen such a wide moat. -- Charlie Munger
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The name of the game is continuing to learn. Even if you're very well trained and have some natural aptitude, you still need to keep learning. -- Charlie Munger
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It's stupid the way people extrapolate the past
and not slightly stupid, but massively stupid. -- Charlie Munger
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We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning and which pays you three to one. -- Charlie Munger
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We have found in a long life that one competitor is frequently enough to ruin a business. -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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I call myself the assistant cult leader. -- Charlie Munger
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We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side. -- Charlie Munger
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So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics. -- Charlie Munger
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No wise pilot, no matter how great his talent and experience, fails to use his checklist. -- Charlie Munger
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Understanding how to be a good investor makes you a better business manager and vice versa. -- Charlie Munger
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Economics is in many respects the queen of the soft sciences. It's expected to be better than the rest. It's my view that economics is better at the multi-disciplinary stuff than the rest of the soft science. And it's also my view that it's still lousy ... -- Charlie Munger
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If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom. -- Charlie Munger
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Capitalism is a pretty brutal place. -- Charlie Munger
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We're emphasizing the knowable by predicting how certain people and companies will swim against the current. We're not predicting the fluctuation in the current. -- Charlie Munger
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We only want what success we can get despite encouraging others to share our general views about reality. -- Charlie Munger
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We have the same problem as everyone else: It's very hard to predict the future ... -- Charlie Munger
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It's a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes. -- Charlie Munger
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If only I had the influence with my wife and children that I have in some other quarters! -- Charlie Munger
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It would be easier to screw up American Express than Coke or Gillette, but it's an immensely strong business. -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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We have a high moral responsibility to be rational -- Charlie Munger
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Just avoid things like racing trains to the crossing, doing cocaine, etc. Develop good mental habits. -- Charlie Munger
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A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business -- Charlie Munger
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The investment game always involves considering both quality and price, and the trick is to get more quality than you pay for in price. It's just that simple. -- Charlie Munger
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You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long, time. -- Charlie Munger
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Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass. -- Charlie Munger
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Fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character and tends to create more of itself, causing more damage to the excuse giver with each tolerated instance. -- Charlie Munger
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Is anyone really surprised that Warren, who is the ultimate embodiment of concentrated decision-making power, picked somebody [Bill and Melinda Gates] who he thinks is like him in many important ways? It was a noble and sensible decision. -- Charlie Munger
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Being an effective teacher is a high calling. -- Charlie Munger
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Don't confuse correlation and causation. Almost all great records eventually dwindle ... -- Charlie Munger
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Hard work, honesty, if you keep at it, will get you almost anything. -- Charlie Munger
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When you locate a bargain, you must ask, 'Why me, God? Why am I the only one who could find this bargain?' -- Charlie Munger
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Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets - and can be lost in a heartbeat. -- Charlie Munger
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Learn how to ignore the examples from others when they are wrong, because few skills are more worth having. -- Charlie Munger
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Those who will not face improvements because they are changes, will face changes that are not improvements. -- Charlie Munger
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We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric. -- Charlie Munger
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We have never had the will to enforce the immigration laws. What you see is what you'll continue to get. -- Charlie Munger
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You're looking for a mispriced gamble. That's what investing is. And you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced. That's value investing. -- Charlie Munger
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It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. -- Charlie Munger
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I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn't like it; indeed, especially when one doesn't like it. -- Charlie Munger
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Those of us who have been very fortunate have a duty to give back. Whether one gives a lot as one goes along as I do or a little and then a lot [when one dies] as Warrendoes is a matter of personal preference. I would hate to have people ask me for money all day long. -- Charlie Munger
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For many of our shareholders, our stock is all they own, and we're acutely aware of that. Our culture [of conservatism] runs pretty deep. -- Charlie Munger
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It's very useful to have a good grasp of all the big ideas in hard and soft science. A, it gives perspective. B, it gives a way for you to organize and file away experience in your head, so to speak. -- Charlie Munger
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With so much money riding on reported numbers, human nature is to manipulate them. And with so many doing it, you get Serpico effects, where everyone rationalizes that it's okay because everyone else is doing it. It is always thus. -- Charlie Munger
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We don't train executives, we find them. If a mountain stands up like Everest, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that it's a high mountain. -- Charlie Munger
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Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself. -- Charlie Munger
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The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward for.
If you want ants to come, you put sugar on the floor. -- Charlie Munger
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The ethos of not fooling yourself is one of the best you could possibly have. It's powerful because it's so rare. -- Charlie Munger
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I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do. -- Charlie Munger
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People are trying to be smart - all I am trying to do is not to be idiotic, but it's harder than most people think. -- Charlie Munger
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When you mix raisins and turds, you've still got turds. -- Charlie Munger
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If you rise in life, you have to behave in a certain way. You can go to a strip club if you're a beer-swilling sand shoveler, but if you're the Bishop of Boston, you shouldn't go. -- Charlie Munger
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If people tell you what you really don't want to hear what's unpleasant-there's an almost automatic reaction of antipathy. You have to train yourself out of it. -- Charlie Munger
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Warren spends 70 hours a week thinking about investing . -- Charlie Munger
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We don't like trading agony for money -- Charlie Munger
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It's not the bad ideas that do you in, but the good ones. -- Charlie Munger
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It's simplicity itself that its future will be way worse than its past. -- Charlie Munger
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The tax code gives you an enormous advantage if you can find some things you can just sit with. -- Charlie Munger
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The world is getting very much more competitive. -- Charlie Munger
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A lot of share-buying, not bargain-seeking, is designed to prop stock prices up. Thirty to 40 years ago, it was very profitable to look at companies that were aggressively buying their own shares. They were motivated simply to buy below what it was worth. -- Charlie Munger
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We want very good leaders who have a lot of power. -- Charlie Munger
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Everyone has the idea of owning good companies. The problem is that they have high prices in relations to assets and earnings, and that takes all of the fun out of the game. -- Charlie Munger
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The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more. -- Charlie Munger
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Don't do cocaine. Don't race trains. And avoid AIDS situations. -- Charlie Munger
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Choose clients as you would friends. -- Charlie Munger
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In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you've just described hell. -- Charlie Munger
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You don't have to have perfect wisdom to get very rich - just a bit better than average over a long period of time. -- Charlie Munger
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There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn't awash in cash - and I don't want to go back. -- Charlie Munger
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An investment decision in the common stock of a company frequently involves a whole lot of factors interacting ... the one thing that causes the most trouble is when you combine a bunch of these together, you get this lollapalooza effect. -- Charlie Munger
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It's dangerous to short stocks. -- Charlie Munger
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Determine value apart from price; progress apart from activity; wealth apart from size. -- Charlie Munger
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People calculate too much and think too little. -- Charlie Munger
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Opportunity comes to the prepared mind. -- Charlie Munger
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Beta and modern portfolio theory and the like - none of it makes any sense to me. -- Charlie Munger
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We don't claim to have perfect morals, but at least we have a huge area of things that, while legal, are beneath us. We won't do them. Currently, there's a culture in Americathat says that anything that won't send you to prison is OK. -- Charlie Munger
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Almost all good businesses engage in 'pain today, gain tomorrow' activities. -- Charlie Munger
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Just keep your head down and do your best. -- Charlie Munger
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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. -- Charlie Munger
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It's not greed that drives the world, but envy. -- Charlie Munger
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Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be. -- Charlie Munger
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You have to learn to be a follower before you become a leader. -- Charlie Munger
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The only way to win is to work, work, work, work, and hope to have a few insights -- Charlie Munger
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An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it's more available to you. -- Charlie Munger
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Strategic plans cause more dumb decisions than anything else in America. -- Charlie Munger
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I regard it as very unfair, but capitalism without failure is like religion without hell. -- Charlie Munger
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I would argue that a majority of the horrors we face would not have happened if the accounting profession developed and enforced better accounting. -- Charlie Munger
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I think it is undeniably true that the human brain must work in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person's brain because it understands the most fundamental models- ones that will do most work per unit. -- Charlie Munger
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In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time - none ... ZERO. -- Charlie Munger
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Whoever makes you smarter a little earlier in life makes you better -- Charlie Munger