Inspirational Quotes by Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

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

We get these questions a lot from the enterprising young. It’s a very intelligent question: You look at some old guy who’s rich and you ask, ‘How can I become like you, except faster?
—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

Confucius said that real knowledge is knowing the extent of one’s ignorance. Aristotle and Socrates said the same thing. Is it a skill that can be taught or learned? It probably can, if you have enough of a stake riding on the outcome. Some people are extraordinarily good at knowing the limits of their knowledge, because they have to be. Think of somebody who’s been a professional tightrope walker for 20 years—and has survived. He couldn’t survive as a tightrope walker for 20 years unless he knows exactly what he knows and what he doesn’t know. He’s worked so hard at it, because he knows if he gets it wrong he won’t survive. The survivors know. … Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.
—Charlie Munger

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 they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.
—Charlie Munger

We’ve really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money’s been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who’ve made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses.
—Charlie Munger

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

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

Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass.
—Charlie Munger

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

There are some things you should pay up for, like quality businesses and people.
—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

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day—if you live long enough—most people get what they deserve.
—Charlie Munger

Warren Buffett has become one hell of a lot better investor since the day I met him, and so have I. If we had been frozen at any given stage, with the knowledge we had, the record would have been much worse than it is. So 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

Today, it seems to be regarded as the duty of CEOs to make the stock go up. This leads to all sorts of foolish behavior. We want to tell it like it is.
—Charlie Munger

I think that a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time. And I think Berkshire’s gained enormously from these investment decisions by learning, through a long, long period. Every time you appoint a new person that’s never had big capital allocation experience, it’s like rolling the dice. We’re way better off having done it for so long. But the decisions blend; and the one feature that comes through is the continuous learning. If we had not kept learning, you wouldn’t even be here. You’d be alive probably, but not here.
—Charlie Munger

The really big ideas carry ninety-five percent of the freight.
—Charlie Munger

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

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

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

When you mix raisins and turds, you still got turds.
—Charlie Munger

Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferrari’s—I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.
—Charlie Munger

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

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

People calculate too much and think too little.
—Charlie Munger

There’s more honor in investment management than in investment banking.
—Charlie Munger

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

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

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

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

One of the great defenses if you’re worried about inflation is not to have a lot of silly needs in your life — if you don’t need a lot of material goods.
—Charlie Munger

Thinking that what’s good for you is good for the wider civilization, and rationalizing foolish or evil conduct, based on your subconscious tendency to serve yourself, is a terrible way to think.
—Charlie Munger

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

Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.
—Charlie Munger

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

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

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

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