Inspirational Quotes by Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Smart people aren’t exempt from professional disasters from overconfidence. Often, they just run aground in the more difficult voyages they choose, relying on their self-appraisals that they have superior talents and methods.
—Charlie Munger

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

Life, in part, is like a poker game, wherein you have to learn to quit sometimes when holding a much-loved hand— you must learn to handle mistakes and new facts that change the odds.
—Charlie Munger

There are always people who will be better at something than you are. You have to learn to be a follower before you become a leader.
—Charlie Munger

Most people are too fretful, they worry too much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it’s time.
—Charlie Munger

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

You can progress only when you learn the method of learning.
—Charlie Munger

‘One solution fits all’ is not the way to go. All these cultures are different. The right culture for the Mayo Clinic is different from the right culture at a Hollywood movie studio. You can’t run all these places with a cookie-cutter solution.
—Charlie Munger

Virtually every investment expert’s public assessment is that he is above average, no matter what is the evidence to the contrary.
—Charlie Munger

Don’t confuse correlation and causation. Almost all great records eventually dwindle.
—Charlie Munger

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

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

Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.
—Charlie Munger

Life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows. It doesn’t matter. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and that your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in constructive fashion. That is a very good idea.
—Charlie Munger

The best armour of old age is a well spent life preceding it.
—Charlie Munger

There are a lot of things we pass on. We have three baskets: in, out, and too tough…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

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

Over the long term, it’s hard for a stock to earn a much better return that the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns six percent on capital over forty years and you hold it for that forty years, you’re not going to make much different than a six percent return—even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns eighteen percent on capital over twenty or thirty years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you’ll end up with one hell of a result.
—Charlie Munger

I’ve seen so much folly and stupidity on the part of our major philanthropic groups, including the World Bank. I really have more confidence in building up the more capitalistic ventures like Costco.
—Charlie Munger

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

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

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 in an ecosystem, people who narrowly specialize can get terribly good at occupying some little niche. Just as animals flourish in niches, similarly, people who specialize in the business world—and get very good because they specialize—frequently find good economics that they wouldn’t get any other way.
—Charlie Munger

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

Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.
—Charlie Munger

There’s integrity, intelligence, experience and dedication. That’s what human enterprises need to run well.
—Charlie Munger

We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning and which pays you three to one.
—Charlie Munger

There is no better teacher than history in determining the future… There are answers worth billions of dollars in $30 history book.
—Charlie Munger

I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart.
—Charlie Munger

If you get a lot of heavy ideology young — and then you start expressing it — you are really locking your brain into a very unfortunate pattern.
—Charlie Munger

I won’t bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave.
—Charlie Munger

Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors. You should have all of this elementary wisdom, and you should go through a mental checklist in order to use it. There is no other procedure that will work as well.
—Charlie Munger

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

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
Topics: Simplicity

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. If you can’t state arguments against what you believe better than your detractors, you don’t know enough.
—Charlie Munger

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

If you’re not confused, I don’t think you understand.
—Charlie Munger

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
Topics: Correction, Reform

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

I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.
—Charlie Munger

In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you’ve just described hell.
—Charlie Munger
Topics: Intelligence

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