Charlie Munger (1924)

Charlie Munger quotes

• To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.”

  Charlie Munger

• Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.”

  Charlie Munger

• 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.”

  Charlie Munger

• 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

• 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,

  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

• 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 ap

  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

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

  Charlie Munger

• There’s integrity, intelligence, experience and dedication.

  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

• 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

• 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

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

  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 we

  Charlie Munger

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

  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

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

  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

• 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

• 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

• 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