50 Quotes Honoring Charlie Munger, on the financial luminary's 100th birth anniversary

Charlie Munger

In memoriam of the late Charlie Munger, who would have turned 100 today, a luminary in the realms of investing and wisdom, we pay homage to the enduring legacy he left behind. Beyond financial acumen, Munger's quotes are timeless life lessons that have inspired countless.

Join us in celebrating his profound insights as we revisit 50 of his most impactful quotes, encapsulating the essence of rationality, integrity, and an unwavering pursuit of knowledge. Let Munger's wisdom continue to echo, guiding and inspiring generations to come.

Also Read: Investing genius Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's trusted advisor, passes away at 99

1. "There's no way that you can live an adequate life without making many mistakes."
2.  "Anytime anybody offers you anything with a big commission and a 200-page prospectus, don't buy it. Occasionally, you'll be wrong if you adopt 'Munger's Rule.' However, over a lifetime, you'll be a long way ahead, and you will miss a lot of unhappy experiences."
3. "Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition."
4. "Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am."
5. "I have a black belt in chutzpah. I was born with it."
6. "The best armor of old age is a well-spent life preceding it."
7. "It never ceases to amaze me to see how much territory can be grasped if one merely masters and consistently uses all the obvious and easily learned principles."
8. "Choose clients as you would friends."
9. "It's not the bad ideas that do you in, but the good ones."
10. "Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom."
11. "Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world."
12. "If you don't allow for self-serving bias in the conduct of others, you are, again, a fool."
13. "For some odd reason, I had an early and extreme multidisciplinary cast of mind. I couldn't stand reaching for a small idea in my discipline when there was a big idea right over the fence in somebody else's discipline. So I just grabbed in all directions for the big ideas that would work."
14. "The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting."
15. "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 ... you will get out of life what you deserve."
16. "Everybody engaged in complex work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing."
17. "I always knew from when I was a little boy that the important opportunities that were going to come to me were few and that the trick was to prepare myself for seizing the few that came. This is not the attitude that they have at a big investment council. They think that if they study a million things, they can know a million things."
18. "The first chance you have to avoid a loss from a foolish loan is by refusing to make it. There is no second chance."
19. "I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do."
20. "A foreign correspondent, after talking to me for a while, once said: 'You don't seem smart enough to be so good at what you're doing. Do you have an explanation?'"
21. "If it is wisdom you're after, you're going to spend a lot of time on your ass reading."
22. "I don't have too much interest in teaching other people how to get rich."
23. "Once you get into debt, it's hell to get out. Don't let credit card debt carry over. You can't get ahead paying eighteen percent."
24. "Bull markets go to people's heads. If you're a duck on a pond, and it's rising due to a downpour, you start going up in the world. But you think it's you, not the pond."
25. "Capitalism is a pretty brutal place."
26. "If you have competence, you know the edge. It wouldn't be a competence if you didn't know where the boundaries lie. Asking whether you've passed the boundary is a question that almost answers itself."
27. "I regard it as very unfair. But capitalism without failure is like religion without hell."
28. "A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another."
29. "Assume life will be really tough, and then ask if you can handle it. If the answer is yes, you've won."
30. "It's a rare business that doesn't have a way worse future than it has a past."
31. "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."
32. "You have to learn to be a follower before you become a leader."
33. "Opportunity comes to the prepared mind."
34. "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."
35. "I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge."
36. "Mankind invented a system to cope with the fact that we are so intrinsically lousy at manipulating numbers. It's called the graph."
37. "I don't invest in what I don't understand. And I don't want to understand Facebook."
38. "Being rational is a moral imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be."
39. "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."
40. "Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it's you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating."
41. "If you want to understand science, you have to understand math. ... The good thing about business is that you don't have to know any higher math."
42. "In my whole life, I have known no wise people ... who didn't read all the time. ... You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads, at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out."
43. "We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning and which pays you three to one."
44. "Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant."
45. "Recognize reality even when you don't like it. Especially when you don't like it."
46. "A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail."
47. "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."
48. "Those of us who have been very fortunate must give back. Whether one gives a lot as one goes along as I do, or a little and then a lot as Warren [plans to], is a matter of personal preference."
49. "You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long, time."
50. '"Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets, and can be lost in a heartbeat."

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