Charlie Munger Quotes

372 Charlie Munger Quotes (Charles T Munger, Berkshire Hathaway)

1 2 3 4



Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris – I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.
Charlie Munger

Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing.
Charlie Munger

We both think the other one [Charlie Munger/Warren Buffett] is worth listening to.
Charlie Munger

Live within your income and save so that you can invest. Learn what you need to learn.
Charlie Munger

The fishing tackle manufacturer I knew had all these flashy green and purple lures. I asked, ‘Do fish take these?’ ‘Charlie’, he said, ‘I don’t sell these lures to fish.’
Charlie Munger

I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in the classroom, which is natural. I can’t remember when I first read Ben Franklin. I had Thomas Jefferson over my bed at seven or eight. My family was into all that stuff, getting ahead through discipline, knowledge, and self-control.
Charlie Munger

[When Charlie was 19 enlisted in the army during world war II] I said I wanted a lot of children, a house with lots of books, and enough money to have freedom.
Charlie Munger

What you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you don’t get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesn’t come often, so seize it when it does come.
Charlie Munger

Do the best you can do. Never tell a lie. If you say you’re going to do it, get it done. Nobody cares about an excuse. Leave for the meeting early. Don’t be late., but if you are late, don’t bother giving people excuses. Just apologise. They’re due the apology, but they’re not interested in the excuse.
Charlie Munger

I never went back to the high tech [investing] mode. I tried it once and found it to have many problems. I was like Mark Twain’s cat that, after a bad experience, never again sat on a hot stove, or on a cold stove either.
Charlie Munger



It’s not that much fun to buy a company that you hope liquidates at a profit just before it is destined to go broke.
Charlie Munger

The difference between a good business and a bad business is that good businesses throw up one easy decision after another. The bad businesses throw up painful decisions time after time.
Charlie Munger

Lush landscaping, that’s what sells [houses]. You spend money on trees, and you get it back triple.
Charlie Munger

Just out of our respective graduate schools, my friend Warren Buffett and I entered the business world to find huge, predictable patterns of extreme irrationality. These irrationalities were obviously important to what we wanted to do, but our professors never mentioned them. Understanding the problem of irrationalities was not easy. I came to study the psychology of human misjudgement almost against my will. I rejected it until I realised that my attitude was costing me a lot of money and reduced my ability to help everything I loved.
Charlie Munger

When it was over [initial real estate investing], I had $1.4 million as the result of my real estate involvement, that was a lot of money at the time. Some was in seconds [trust deeds], and so forth, form people who bought apartments. Later the seconds were paid. It was a substantial backlog of economic security. I did a total of five projects, then stopped. I didn’t like constantly borrowing more money. Also, it was an activity with many details, each crucial, difficult to handle as a full-time activity and extremely difficult as a part-time activity.
Charlie Munger

A partner ideally is capable of working alone, you can be a dominant partner, subordinate partner, or an always collaborative equal partner. I’ve done all three. People couldn’t believe that I suddenly made myself a subordinate partner to Warren. But there are people that it’s okay to be subordinate partner to. I didn’t have the kind of ego that prevented it. There always are people who will be better at something than you are. You have to learn to be a follower before you become a leader. People should learn to play all roles. You can divide up in different ways with different people.
Charlie Munger

If, in your thinking, you rely entirely on others, often through purchase of professional advice, whenever outside a small territory of your own, you will suffer much calamity.
Charlie Munger

[Benjamin] Franklin was able to make the contribution he did because he had [financial] freedom.
Charlie Munger

[About being a lawyer] There is now more money to be made from law, but less time to enjoy it.
Charlie Munger

Arrangements between partners are tricky and rely on a combination of brains, judgement and trustworthiness.
Charlie Munger



I am a biography nut myself, and I think when you’re trying to teach the great concepts that work, it helps to tie them into the lives and personal ties of the people who developed them. I think that you learn economics better if you make Adam Smith your friend. That sounds funny, making friends among the eminent dead, but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better in life and work better in education. It’s way better than just giving the basic concepts.
Charlie Munger

Our experience in shifting from savings and loan operation to ownership of Freddie Mac shares 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 things, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime. A few major opportunities clearly recognisable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind, loving diagnosis involving multiple variables. An then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favourable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past.
Charlie Munger

Why shouldn’t we do more of what works well for us and what’s less complicated?
Charlie Munger

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. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying, ‘It’s the strong swimmers who drown.’
Charlie Munger

There are huge advantages for an individual to get into a position where you make a few great investments and just sit back, you’re paying less to brokers, you’re listening to less nonsense.
Charlie Munger

There’s integrity, intelligence, experience and dedication.
Charlie Munger

People underrate the importance of a few simple big ideas – the chief lesson is that a few big ideas really work.
Charlie Munger

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. You’re going to fail through lack of specialisation.
Charlie Munger

Our education was far too uni-disciplinary. Many problems by nature, cross many academic disciplines.
Charlie Munger

You don’t have to know everything. A few really big ideas carry most of the freight.
Charlie Munger



Like any good algebraist, the pilot is made to think sometimes in a forward fashion and sometimes in reverse; and so he learns when to concentrate mostly on what he wants to happen and also when to concentrate mostly on avoiding what he does not want to happen.
Charlie Munger

How do you learn to be a great investor? First of all, you have to understand your own nature. Each person has to play the game given his own marginal utility considerations and in a way that takes into account his own psychology. If losses are going to make you miserable and some losses are inevitable – you might be wise to utilise a very conservative pattern of investment and savings all your life. So you have to adapt your strategy to your own nature and your own talents. I don’t think there’s a one size fits all investment strategy that I can give you.
Charlie Munger

I don’t think you can get to be a really good investor over a broad range without doing a massive amount of reading. I don’t think any one book will do it for you.
Charlie Munger

Frequently, you’ll look at a business having fabulous results. And the question is, ‘How long can this continue?’. Well, there’s only one way I know to answer that. And that’s to think about why the results are occurring now – and then to figure out the forces that could cause those results to stop occurring.
Charlie Munger

In the US, a person or institution with almost all wealth invested, long-term, in just three fine domestic corporations, is securely rich. Long-term results will be superior by reason of his lower costs, required emphasis on long-term effects, and concentration in his most preferred choices.
Charlie Munger

Investors can have 90% of their wealth in a single company, if it is the right company.
Charlie Munger

You can be sure, that if you master the wonderful concepts, you’re going to get opportunities if you look for them. But you won’t get an unlimited number of good ideas – so when they come along, seize them.
Charlie Munger

I am quite pleased with my children in terms of morality, behaviour and such.
Charlie Munger

I’ve had kids in both moderate and immoderate circumstances, and to be honest, my children that were raised when we had less money have worked harder.
Charlie Munger

After all, a competing product, if it is never tried, can’t act as a reward creating a conflicting habit. Every spouse knows that.
Charlie Munger



1 2 3 4


Return from Charlie Munger Quotes to Quoteswise.com