Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger

Investor, Businessman

Charlie Munger is a prominent investor and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, known for his insights on rational decision-making and multidisciplinary learning.

Thinking People Investing Long Ideas Years
Born
August 1, 1924
Quotes
517
Rank
#309

Quote collection

Charlie Munger quotes (page 22 of 26)

517 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Charlie Munger Investor, Businessman
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"The cash register did more for human morality than the Congregational Church. It was a really powerful phenomenon to make an economic system work better, just as, in reverse, a system that can be easily defrauded ruins a civilization. A system that's very hard to defraud, like a cash register, helped the economic performance of a civilization by reducing vice, but very few people within economics talk about it in those terms."

Powerful Civilization People
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"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."

Smart Dumb Acquisition
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Charlie Munger Investor, Businessman
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"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."

Over You Cards Credit
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"Beta and modern portfolio theory and the like - none of it makes any sense to me."

Portfolios Modern Beta
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"I think the idea that the hedge fund manager gets lower taxes than the taxi driver or the physics professor is insane. The legislators who leave that policy in place are derelict in their duties to be rational and fair. There are plenty of them in both political parties. It's totally outrageous."

Party Thinking Ideas
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Charlie Munger Investor, Businessman
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"If you rise in life, you have to behave in a certain way. You can go to a strip club if you're a beer-swilling sand shoveler, but if you're the Bishop of Boston, you shouldn't go."

Beer Boston Clubs
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"We have a history when things are really horrible of wading in when no one else will."

Horrible
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Charlie Munger Investor, Businessman
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"It would be nice if this [finding really cheap stocks] happened all the time. Unfortunately, it doesn't."

Nice Would Be Findings
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"Wrigley is a great business, but that doesn't solve the problem. Buying great businesses at advantageous prices is very tough."

Buying Tough Great Business
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"It took us months of buying all the Coke stock we could to accumulate $1 billion worth - equal to 7% of the company. It's very hard to accumulate major positions."

Coke Buying Months
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"When I run into a paradox I think either I'm a total horse's ass to have gotten to this point, or I'm fruitfully near the edge of my discipline. It adds excitement to life to wonder which it is."

Running Horse Thinking
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"This is an amazingly sound place. We are more disaster-resistant than most other places. We haven't pushed it as hard as other people would have pushed it. I don't want to go back to Go. I've been to Go. A lot of our shareholders have a majority of their net worth in Berkshire, and they don't want to go back to Go either."

People Majority Sound
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Charlie Munger Investor, Businessman
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"Let me know what your problem is, and I will try to make it more difficult for you."

Trying Problem Difficult
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"I think that if you have a single payer system and an opt-out for people who want to pay more [for better service, etc.], I think it would be better - and I think we'll eventually get there. It wouldn't be better at the top - [our current system] is the best in the world at the top. But the waste in the present system is awesome and we do get some very perverse incentives."

Thinking People Would Be
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"...in terms of business mistakes that I've seen over a long lifetime, I would say that trying to minimize taxes too much is one of the great standard causes of really dumb mistakes. I see terrible mistakes from people being overly motivated by tax considerations. Warren and I personally don't drill oil wells. We pay our taxes. And we've done pretty well, so far. Anytime somebody offers you a tax shelter from here on in life, my advice would be don't buy it."

Mistake Oil Long
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Charlie Munger Investor, Businessman
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"[GEICO] got to thinking that, because they were making a lot of money, they knew everything. And they suffered huge losses. All they had to do was to cut out all the folly and go back to the perfectly wonderful business that was lying there."

Lying Cutting Loss
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"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."

Interesting Giving Black
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"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."

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

Men Kicking Fluency
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