Charlie Munger Quotes

Cicero's words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view.

My idea of a good place to shop is Costco - it has these heavily marbled fillet steaks. The idea of eating some wheat thing and washing it down with carrot juice has never appealed to me.

As I continued through Cicero's pages, I found much more material celebrating my way of life.

I think it would be a great improvement if there were no D&O insurance . The counter-argument is that no-one with any money would serve on a board. But I think net net you'd be better off.

We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire.

Why would you want to invest with a guy whose thought process says, "If a second layer of fees is good, then let's add a third layer.

Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well.

It's dishonourable to stay stupider than you need to be

Organized common (or uncommon) sense -- very basic knowledge -- is an enormously powerful tool. There are huge dangers with computers. People calculate too much and think too little.

Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer.

We have the same problem as everyone else: It's very hard to predict the future.

I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it.

To say accounting for derivatives is Americais a sewer is an insult to sewage.

The first chance you have to avoid a loss from a foolish loan is by refusing to make it; there is no second chance.

A director who gets $150,000 per year from a company and needs the money is not independent.

I don't think vengeance is much good.

I feel that by getting rich in the way I did, I think my own example has hurt my own country.

All sensible investing is value investing

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?'

People calculate too much and think too little.

I remember the $0.05 hamburger and a $0.40-per-hour minimum wage, so I've seen a tremendous amount of inflation in my lifetime. Did it ruin the investment climate? I think not.

I'm a bull on Berkshire Hathaway. There may be some considerable waiting, but I think there are some good days ahead.

Anyone with an engineering frame of mind will look at [accounting standards] and want to throw up.

If it happens every year like clockwork, what's so extraordinary about it?

The theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you're going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.

One could imagine a period like Japan13 years ago, however, in which indexing over time wouldn't work.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.

For many of our shareholders, our stock is all they own, and we're acutely aware of that. Our culture [of conservatism] runs pretty deep.

If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question (of whether you are past the boundary) is to answer it.

The Internet bubble circa 2000 is the most extreme in modern capitalism. In the 1930s, we had the worst depression in 600 years. Today is almost as extreme in the opposite way.

What matters most: passion or competence that was born in? Berkshireis full of people who have a peculiar passion for their own business. I would argue passion is more important than brain power.

You have a real asset-price bubble in places like parts of California and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

The normal expectancy of the average investor - for example, the pension funds of AT&T or IBM - is 6% for a long time.

Accounting incomes were reduced by discrepancy [ but] "the net amount paid by lawyers for lawyerly discrepancy is close to zippo. In this case, the goddess of justice was blind.

I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn't like it; indeed, especially when one doesn't like it.

If mutual fund directors are independent, then I'm the lead character in the Bolshoi Ballet.

There are always people who will be better at some thing than you are.

If you can get good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.

See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.

We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.

'F.A.S.B' ... 'Financial Accounts Still Bogus'.

When you mix raisins and turds, you've still got turds.

Take a simple idea and take it seriously.

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