Quote

A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.

Charlie Munger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Life
Avoid
Early
Marriage
Knowing
Success
Business
Comes
Death
Etc

More quotes by Charlie Munger

Image
Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime.
Charlie Munger
Image
Beta and modern portfolio theory and the like - none of it makes any sense to me.
Charlie Munger
Image
So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.
Charlie Munger
Image
I think gold is a great thing to sew onto your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but civilized people don't buy gold, they invest in productive businesses.
Charlie Munger
Image
If the same family were always on the bottom, then you'd have big resentments. But if DuPonts go down and Pampered Chef up, [that's good]. That much churn makes people think the system is fairer. Buffett: We don't like churn now, but we liked it more 30-40 years ago.
Charlie Munger
Image
You must have the confidence to override people with more credentials than you whose cognition is impaired by incentive-caused bias or some similar psychological force that is obviously present. But there are also cases where you have to recognize that you have no wisdom to add - and that your best course is to trust some expert.
Charlie Munger
Image
I think there's an awful lot of twaddle and bullshit on EVA. The whole game is to turn retained earnings into more earnings. EVA has ideas about cost of capital that make no sense. Of course, if a company generates high returns on capital and can maintain this over time, it will do well. But the mental system as a whole does not work.
Charlie Munger
Image
Just avoid things like racing trains to the crossing, doing cocaine, etc. Develop good mental habits.
Charlie Munger
Image
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.
Charlie Munger
Image
Some people seem to think there's no trouble just because it hasn't happened yet. If you jump out the window at the 42nd floor and you're still doing fine as you pass the 27th floor, that doesn't mean you don't have a serious problem. I would want to address the problem right now.
Charlie Munger
Image
Practically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they’re taught in academia, and (2) doesn’t mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I’ve tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that.
Charlie Munger
Image
In my life there are not that many questions I can't properly deal with using my $40 adding machine and dog-eared compound interest table.
Charlie Munger
Image
Darwin paid particular attention to disconfirming evidence. Objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you're going to be a great thinker.
Charlie Munger
Image
We don't claim to have perfect morals, but at least we have a huge area of things that, while legal, are beneath us. We won't do them. Currently, there's a culture in Americathat says that anything that won't send you to prison is OK.
Charlie Munger
Image
I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span.
Charlie Munger
Image
The ethos of not fooling yourself is one of the best you could possibly have. It's powerful because it's so rare.
Charlie Munger
Image
In engineering, people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don't give a damn about safety. They let it balloon and balloon and balloon. It's aided by false accounting.
Charlie Munger
Image
I regard it as very unfair, but capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.
Charlie Munger
Image
Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition.
Charlie Munger
Image
Three rules for a career: 1) Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself 2) Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire and 3) Work only with people you enjoy.
Charlie Munger