After nearly making a terrible mistake not buying See's, we've made this mistake many times. We are apparently slow learners. These opportunity costs don't show up on financial statements, but have cost us many billions.
Charlie MungerA lot of opportunities in life tend to last a short while, due to some temporary inefficiency... For each of us, really good investment opportunities aren't going to come along too often and won't last too long, so you've got to be ready to act and have a prepared mind.
Charlie MungerPractically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques theyโre taught in academia, and (2) doesnโt mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake Iโve tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that.
Charlie MungerPeople like the robber barons assumed that the doctrine of the survival of the fittest authenticated them as deserving power. You know, "I'm the richest. Therefore, I'm the best. God's in his heaven, etc." And that reaction of the robber barons was so irritating to people that it made it unfashionable to think of an economy as an ecosystem. But the truth is that it is a lot like an ecosystem. And you get many of the same results.
Charlie Munger