Charlie Munger Quotes

You'll find many markets where bottlers of Pepsi and Coke both make a lot of money and many others where they destroy most of the profitability of the two franchises. That must get down to the peculiarities of individual adjustment to market capitalism. I think you 'd have to know the people involved to fully understand what was happening.

We may well have a competitive advantage buying decent businesses at decent prices. But they won't be fabulous businesses and fabulous prices. There's too much competition and money out there, with many buyout specialists.

Those who will not face improvements because they are changes, will face changes that are not improvements.

People calculate too much and think too little.

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.

Berkshire's past record has been almost ridiculous. If Berkshirehad used even half the leverage of, say, Rupert Murdoch, it would be five times its current size.

If you always tell people why, they'll understand it better, they'll consider it more important, and they'll be more likely to comply.

In fact I've probably never seen such a wide moat.

The general culture of investment banking has deteriorated over the years. We did a $6 million deal years ago for Diversified Retailing and we were rigorously and intelligently screened. They bankers cared and wanted to protect their clients. The culture now is that anything that can be sold for a profit will be. 'Can you sell it?' is the moral test, and that's not an adequate test.

I don't want to sell credit to people who are going to hurt themselves with it. You should only sell products that are good for the people who use them. Some disagree with this, but I know I'm right. That is to say, you're talking to a Republican who admires Elizabeth Warren.

Suppose you were a real estate investor with a 1/3 interest in the best apartment complex in town, the best mall, and the best office building. Would you feel like a poor, undiversified investor? No! But as soon as you get into stocks, people feel this way. Partly, people need to justify their fees.

We're emphasizing the knowable by predicting how certain people and companies will swim against the current. We're not predicting the fluctuation in the current.

The game is to keep learning, and I don't think people are going to keep learning who don't like the learning process.

... some important factor doesn't lose its "share of force" just because some "expert" can better measure other types of force.

Just as a man working with his tools should know its limitations, a man working with his cognitive apparatus must know its limitations.

To me, it's obvious that the winner has to bet very selectively. It's been obvious to me since very early in life. I don't know why it's not obvious to very many other people.

I see almost no change in the price of the composite product that flows through Costco I don't feel sorry for the people who pay $27 million for an 8,000-square-foot condo in Manhattan. So inflation comes in places.

If you take sales presentations and brokers of commercial real estate and businesses... I'm 70 years old, I've never seen one I thought was even within hailing distance of objective truth.... 'incentive-caused bias,' causes this terrible abuse. And many of the people who are doing it you would be glad to have married into your family compared to what you're otherwise going to get.

I won’t bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave.

Without numerical fluency, in the part of life most of us inhibit, you are like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you've just described hell.

Our biggest mistakes, were things we didn't do, companies we didn't buy.

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

Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it's you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating.

The quality of the medical care delivered, including the pharmaceutical industry, has improved a lot. I don't think it's crazy for a rich country like the USto spend 15% of GDP on healthcare, and if it rose to 16-17%, it's not a big worry.

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 I.Q.

Even if you assume that the whole economy would work better had we never had double taxation, having the envy and resentment of the richest paying low or no taxes screams of injustice. You have to have a fair system.

Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself.

A lot of our respected financial institutions are just casinos in drag.

You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long, time.

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.

We have to have a special insight, or we'll put it in the 'too tough' basket. All of you have to look for a special area of competency and focus on that.

What good is envy? It’s the one sin you can’t have any fun at.

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

Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.

At most corporations if you make an acquisition and it turns out to be a disaster, all the paperwork and presentations that caused the dumb acquisition to be made are quickly forgotten. You've got denial, you've got everything in the world. You've got Pavlovian association tendency. Nobody even wants to even be associated with the damned thing or even mention it. At Johnson & Johnson, they make everybody revisit their old acquisitions and wade through the presentations. That is a very smart thing to do. And by the way, I do the same thing routinely.

Over many decades, our usual practice is that if something we like goes down, we buy more and more. Sometimes something happens, you realize you’re wrong, and you get out. But if you develop correct confidence in your judgment, buy more and take advantage of stock prices.

Of course the self-serving bias is something you want to get out of yourself. Thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on this subconscious tendency to serve one's self is a terribly inaccurate way to think.

As I talk about strengths and weaknesses in academic economics, one interesting fact you are entitled to know is that I never took a course in economics. And with this striking lack of credentials, you may wonder why I have the chutzpah to be up here giving this talk. The answer is I have a black belt in chutzpah. I was born with it.

Look at those hedge funds - you think they can wait? They don't know how to wait! I have sat for years at a time with $10 to $12 million in treasuries or municipals, just waiting, waiting...As Jesse Livermore said, 'The big money is not in the buying and selling...but in the waiting.'

I think the notion...that liquidity is this - of tradable common stock - is a great contributor to capitalism - I think that is mostly twaddle... The liquidity gives us these crazy booms, which have many problems as well as virtues.

Whoever makes you smarter a little earlier in life makes you better

Obviously if you want to get good at something which is competitive, you have to think about it and practice a lot. You have to keep learning because world keeps changing and competitors keep learning. You have to go to bed wiser than you got up. As you try to master what you are trying to do – people who do that almost never fail utterly. Very few have ever failed with that approach. You may rise slowly, but you are sure to rise.

An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it's more available to you.

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.

I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I've reached that state.

I think the main figure that matters to all of us, including people in the media, is: How does GDP per capita grow? And those figures have been very good. There is a huge flux both up and down, so it isn't like we're all static in status. What's important is that pie grows.

Even in pure mathematics they can't remove all paradox, and the rest of us should also recognize we are going to have to endure a lot of paradox, like it or not.