"Just keep your head down and do your best."
Read quote
9 likes
Quote collection
Charlie Munger quotes (page 19 of 26)
517 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I think track records are very important. If you start early trying to have a perfect one in some simple thing like honesty, you're well on your way to success in this world."
Read quote
9 likes
"Chris Davis [of the Davisfunds] has a temple of shame. He celebrates the things they did that lost them a lot of money. What is also needed is a temple of shame squared for things you didn't do that would have made you rich. Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition. Reality doesn't remind you. Why not celebrate stupidities in both categories?"
Read quote
9 likes
"It's dangerous to short stocks."
Read quote
9 likes
"You'll better understand the evil when top audit firms started selling fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you that one told me that they're better [than the others] because they only sold [the schemes] to their top-20 clients, so no-one would notice."
Read quote
9 likes
"The best armor of old age is a well-spent life preceding it."
Read quote
9 likes
"Of course I'm troubled by huge consumer debt levels - we've pushed consumer credit very hard in the US. Eventually, if it keeps growing, it will stop growing. As Herb Stein said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." When it stops, it may be unpleasant. Other than Herb Stein's quote, I have no comment. But the things that trouble you are troubling me."
Read quote
9 likes
"The SEC does way more good than harm - the last thing I would do is get rid of the SEC...if accounting were thoroughly fixed, a lot of other sins would go away. We're paying a huge price for deterioration of accounting."
Read quote
9 likes
"You don't want to be like the motion picture exec who had so many people at his funeral, but they were there just make sure he was dead. Or how about the guy who, at his funeral, the priest said, "Won't anyone stand up and say anything nice for the deceased?" and finally someone said, "Well, his brother was worse.""
Read quote
9 likes
"We’re partial to putting out large amounts of money where we won’t have to make another decision."
Read quote
9 likes
"I don't invest in what I don't understand. And I don't want to understand Facebook."
Read quote
9 likes
"Litigation is notoriously time-consuming, inefficient, costly and unpredictable."
Read quote
9 likes
"Our standard prescription for the know-nothing investor with a long-term time horizon is a no-load index fund. I think that works better than relying on your stock broker. The people who are telling you to do something else are all being paid by commissions or fees. The result is that while index fund investing is becoming more and more popular, by and large it's not the individual investors that are doing it. It's the institutions."
Read quote
9 likes
"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."
Read quote
9 likes
"We bought a doomed textile mill [Berkshire Hathaway] and a California S&L [Savings & Loan; Wesco] just before a calamity. Both were bought at a discount to liquidation value."
Read quote
9 likes
"Like the stocks of both Berkshire and Wesco to trade within hailing distance of what we think of as intrinsic value. When it runs up, we try to talk it down. That's not at all common in Corporate America, but that's the way we act."
Read quote
9 likes
"I'm proud to be associated with the value system at Berkshire Hathaway; I think you'll make more money in the end with good ethics than bad."
Read quote
9 likes
"The cost of being a publicly traded stock has gone way, way up. It doesn't make sense for a little company to be public anymore. A lot of little companies are going private to be rid of these burdensome requirements."
Read quote
9 likes
"We like our current shareholders and don't want to entice anyone to become one. It would help current shareholders to hear our CEOs [of the Berkshireoperating subsidiaries], but we promised them they could spend 100% of their time on their business. We place no impediments on them running their businesses. Many have expressed to me how happy they are that they don't have to spend 25% of time on activities they didn't like."
Read quote
9 likes
"I've heard that one-half of the students at elite schools want to go into private equity or hedge funds. They want to keep up with their age cohorts at Goldman. This can't possibly end well in terms of meeting these expectations."
Read quote
9 likes