Charlie Munger is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist who was born on January 1, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska. He is best known as the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate holding company founded by Warren Buffett.
Munger attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a degree in mathematics in 1945. After serving in the US Army during World War II, he attended Harvard Law School and graduated in 1948. He then worked as a lawyer for several years before founding his own investment partnership in the early 1960s.
Munger met Warren Buffett in 1959, and the two became close friends and business partners. In 1978, Munger joined Berkshire Hathaway as Vice Chairman, where he has worked alongside Buffett ever since. Munger is widely regarded as one of the most respected investors in the world and is known for his sharp mind, common sense, and strong moral compass.
Throughout his career, Munger has emphasized the importance of reading and continuous learning, and he is known for his multidisciplinary approach to investing. He is also a noted philanthropist and has donated generously to a variety of causes, including education and medical research.
Today, Munger is considered one of the most successful investors of all time, and his influence is felt across the business world. His sharp insights and practical wisdom have made him a sought-after advisor and mentor, and he continues to be an inspiration to investors and business leaders around the world.
charlie munger quotes
- “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.”
- “I think part of the popularity of Berkshire Hathaway is that we look like people who have found a trick. It’s not brilliance. It’s just avoiding stupidity.”
- “The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”
- “I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.”
- “If you’re not a little confused by what’s going on, you’re not paying attention.”
- “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.”
- “If you want to go through life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, be my guest. But if you want to prosper, if you want to be an honorable person and have your children respect you, you have to adapt to the realities of the world you’re in.”
- “I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn’t like it; indeed, especially when one doesn’t like it.”
- “We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.”
- “The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble…We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.”
- “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 opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best-loved ideas.”
- “The desire to be a lifelong learner is a must for success in today’s fast-changing world. In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.”
- “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.”
- “The best thing you can do is figure out where you’re wrong.”
- “The big money is not in the buying and selling. But in the waiting.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “We don’t have a lot of technology in our business. We basically stick to basic facts and figures and the best analysis we can do. We have to do it in a hurry because we have a lot of fish to fry.”
- “If you want to be successful, you have to be able to keep things in perspective. Life is not a zero-sum game. It’s a very positive-sum game if you’re really good at it.”
- “The best thing you can do is get good at being a generalist. Develop as many mental models from as many disciplines as possible.”
- “The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “I think that every time you see the word ‘Ebitda,’ you should substitute the word ‘bullshit earnings.'”
- “We have a passion for keeping things simple. If something is too hard, we move on to something else.”
- “The best thing you can do is find the right path, keep to it and don’t be swayed by short-term developments that may sidetrack you. There’s always a lot of noise in any market, and you have to ignore the noise and focus on the fundamentals.”
- “The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”
- “The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble…We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.”
- “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.”
- “We try to avoid complexity at all costs, and when we see it, we run from it.”
- “The safest way to try and get what you want is to try and 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.”
- “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.”
- “I think part of the popularity of Berkshire Hathaway is that we look like people who have found a trick. It’s not brilliance. It’s just avoiding stupidity.”
- “I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.”
- “If you’re not a little confused by what’s going on, you’re not paying attention.”
- “The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”
- “I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn’t like it; indeed, especially when one doesn’t like it.”
- “We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.”
- “The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble…We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.”
- “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. A few major opportunities clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind that loves diagnosis involving multiple variables.”
- “We are trying to be roughly right rather than precisely wrong.”
- “The best thing you can do is learn from other people’s mistakes. You don’t have time to make them all yourself.”
- “The best thing you can do is stay rational and try to think independently.”
- “If you want to go through life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, be my guest. But if you want to prosper, if you want to be an honorable person and have your children respect you, you have to adapt to the realities of the world you’re in.”
- “We have to deal in things that are not perfectly knowable. You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.”
- “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.”
- “We try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”
- “It’s not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.”
- “The best thing you can do is develop a mind that can make better decisions.”
- “We have to have a special aptitude for never making mistakes; a special aptitude for getting into trouble and yet surviving.”