"I don't think vengeance is much good."
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Quote collection
Charlie Munger quotes (page 25 of 26)
517 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A director who gets $150,000 per year from a company and needs the money is not independent."
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"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."
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"Those of us who have been very fortunate have a duty to give back. Whether one gives a lot as one goes along as I do or a little and then a lot [when one dies] as Warrendoes is a matter of personal preference. I would hate to have people ask me for money all day long."
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"I remember the $0.05 hamburger and a $0.40-per-hour minimum wage, so I've seen a tremendous amount of inflation in my lifetime. Did it ruin the investment climate? I think not."
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"People calculate too much and think too little."
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"All sensible investing is value investing"
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"Fancy computers are engaging in legalized front-running. The profits are clearly coming from the rest of us - our college endowments and our pensions. Why is this legal? What the hell is the government thinking? It's like letting rats into a restaurant."
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"Anyone with an engineering frame of mind will look at [accounting standards] and want to throw up."
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"The lawyers have escaped most criticism [and undeservedly so]. The tax shelters [were approved by lawyers, who got paid huge commissions to do so] and every miscreant had a high-falutin' lawyer at his side. Why don't more law firms vote with their feet and not take clients who have signs on them that say, "I'm a skunk and will be hard to handle?" I've noticed that firms that avoid trouble over long periods of time have an institutional process that tunes bad clients out. Boy, if I were running a law firm, I'd want a system like that because a lot of firms have a lot of bad clients."
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"I'm a bull on Berkshire Hathaway. There may be some considerable waiting, but I think there are some good days ahead."
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"If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question (of whether you are past the boundary) is to answer it."
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"For many of our shareholders, our stock is all they own, and we're acutely aware of that. Our culture [of conservatism] runs pretty deep."
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"You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them."
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"One could imagine a period like Japan13 years ago, however, in which indexing over time wouldn't work."
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"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."
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"I talked to one accountant, a very nice fellow who I would have been glad to have his family marry into mine. He said, "What these other accounting firms have done is very unethical. The [tax avoidance scheme] works best if it's not found out [by the IRS], so we only give it to our best clients, not the rest, so it's unlikely to be discovered. So my firm is better than the others." [Laughter] I'm not kidding. And he was a perfectly nice man. People just follow the crowd...Their mind just drifts off in a ghastly way."
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"The theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you're going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education."
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"If it happens every year like clockwork, what's so extraordinary about it?"
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"I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn't like it; indeed, especially when one doesn't like it."
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