Charlie Munger Quotes

372 Charlie Munger Quotes

1 2 3 4



The best way to avoid enjoy, recognised by Aristotle, is to plainly deserve the success we get.
Charlie Munger

The company that needs a new machine tool, and hasn’t bought it, is already paying for it.
Charlie Munger

Damn right!
Charlie Munger

It is really useful to be reminded of your errors. I think we’re [Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger] pretty good at that. We do kind of mentally rub our own noses in our own mistakes. And that is a very good mental habit.
Charlie Munger

Quickly identify mistakes and take action.
Charlie Munger

Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead – through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid these qualities and you will succeed. Tell me where I’m going to die, that is, so I don’t go there.
Charlie Munger

Warren Buffett is a learning machine.
Charlie Munger

But to me all intelligent investing is value investing.
Charlie Munger

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

Necessity never made a good bargain.
Charlie Munger



Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behaviour accordingly. If your new behaviour gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group … then to hell with them.
Charlie Munger

I wanted to get rich so I could be independent, like Lord John Maynard Keynes.
Charlie Munger

Repetition is the heart of instruction.
Charlie Munger

I’ve gotten paid a lot over the years for reading through the newspapers.
Charlie Munger

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren [Buffett] reads – and how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.
Charlie Munger

[Charlie Munger’s secret to success when he could only answer in one word] Rational.
Charlie Munger

[Q: How do Warren Buffett and you differ in your approach to investing and decision making? A:] Not much. And therein lies the problem: If something gets by one of us, it’s likely to get by both of us.
Charlie Munger

Value for one’s money is as important in philanthropy as it is in investing.
Charlie Munger

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

Take a simple idea and take it seriously.
Charlie Munger



When a better tool (idea or approach) comes along, what could be better than to swap it for your old, less useful tool? Warren and I routinely do this, but most people, as Galbraith says, forever cling to their old, less useful tools.
Charlie Munger

Sit on your ass investing. You’re paying less to brokers, you’re listening to less nonsense, and if it works, the tax system gives you an extra one, two, or three percentage points per annum.
Charlie Munger

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

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

Quickly eliminate the big universe of what not to do, followup with a fluent, multidisciplinary attach on what remains, then act decisively when, and only when, the right circumstances appear.
Charlie Munger

It’s kind of fun to sit there and out-think people who are way smarter than you are because you’re trained yourself to be more objective and more multidisciplinary. Furthermore, there is a lot of money in it, as I can testify from my own personal experience.
Charlie Munger

We’re emphasising 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

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 it’s competitive advantage. Look for more value in terms of discounted future cashflow than you are paying for. 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 favour. We just keep our heads down and handle the headwinds and tailwinds as best we can, and take the result after a period of years.
Charlie Munger

If you have competence, you pretty know it’s boundaries already. To ask the question [of whether you are past the boundary] is to answer it.
Charlie Munger

We have three baskets for investing: yes, no and too tough to understand.
Charlie Munger



A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.
Charlie Munger

This habit of committing far more time to learning and thinking than to doing is no accident.
Charlie Munger

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 IQ.
Charlie Munger

Extreme patience combined with extreme decisiveness.
Charlie Munger

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

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

All intelligent investing is value investing – acquiring more than you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.
Charlie Munger

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

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

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



1 2 3 4


Return from Charlie Munger Quotes to Quoteswise.com