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You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.

Charlie Munger

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Charlie Munger
Age: 100
Born: 1924
Born: January 1
Business Person
Financier
Investor
Lawyer
Omaha
Nebraska
Charlie Thomas Munger
Charles T. Munger
Charles Thomas Munger
Thing
Courses
Commercial
Mediterranean
Life
Course
Practicals
Accountants
Heard
Practical
Venice
Came
Invention
Accounting
Language
Useful
Entry
Business
However
Deliver
Power
Civilization
Commerce
Great
Hell
Double
Bookkeeping

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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The basic concept of value to a private owner and being motivated when you're buying and selling securities by reference to intrinsic value instead of price momentum - I don't think that will ever be outdated.
Charlie Munger
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Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome
Charlie Munger
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The first chance you have to avoid a loss from a foolish loan is by refusing to make it there is no second chance.
Charlie Munger
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In investment management today, everybody wants not only to win, but to have a yearly outcome path that never diverges very much from a standard path except on the upside. Well, that is a very artificial, crazy construct. That's the equivalent in investment management to the custom of binding the feet of Chinese women
Charlie Munger
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Just keep your head down and do your best.
Charlie Munger
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One of the smartest things a person can do is dampen investment expectations, especially with Berkshire. That would be mature and responsible. I like our model and we should do nicely
Charlie Munger
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See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.
Charlie Munger
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Most people are too fretful, they worry to much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it's time.
Charlie Munger
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You could argue that [the decline of public schools] is one of the major disasters in our lifetimes. We took one of the greatest successes in the history of the earth and turned it into one of the greatest disasters in the history of the earth.
Charlie Munger
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Early Charlie Munger is a horrible career model for the young, because not enough was delivered to civilization in return for what was wrested from capitalism. And other similar career models are even worse.
Charlie Munger
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I always like it when someone attractive to me agrees with me, so I have fond memories of Phil Fisher. The idea that it was hard to find good investments, so concentrate in a few, seems to me to be an obviously good idea. But 98% of the investment world doesn't think this way.
Charlie Munger
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If all you succeed in doing in life is getting rich by buying little pieces of paper, it's a failed life. Life is more than being shrewd in wealth accumulation.
Charlie Munger
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Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.
Charlie Munger
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We don't have an isolated group [of senior managers] surrounded by servants. Berkshire's headquarters is a tiny little suite. We just came back from Berkshire's board meeting it had moved up to the board room of the Kiewit company and [it was so large and luxurious that] I felt uncomfortable.
Charlie Munger
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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.
Charlie Munger
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Well the open-outcry auction is just made to turn the brain into mush: you've got social proof, the other guy is bidding, you get reciprocation tendency, you get deprival super-reaction syndrome, the thing is going away... I mean it just absolutely is designed to manipulate people into idiotic behavior.
Charlie Munger
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How should the best parts of psychology and economics interrelate in an enlightened economist's mind?... I think that these behavioral economics...or economists are probably the ones that are bending them in the correct direction. I don't think it's going to be that hard to bend economics a little to accommodate what's right in psychology.
Charlie Munger
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Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am.
Charlie Munger
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It's not a competency if you don't know the edge of it.
Charlie Munger
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We want very good leaders who have a lot of power.
Charlie Munger