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Don't do cocaine. Don't race trains. And avoid AIDS situations.
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
Trains
Cocaine
Situations
Aids
Avoid
Train
Situation
Race
More quotes by Charlie Munger
This is a good life lesson: getting the right people into your system is the most important thing you can do.
Charlie Munger
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
People calculate too much and think too little.
Charlie Munger
Warren is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles who outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you.
Charlie Munger
Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.
Charlie Munger
Is anyone really surprised that Warren, who is the ultimate embodiment of concentrated decision-making power, picked somebody [Bill and Melinda Gates] who he thinks is like him in many important ways? It was a noble and sensible decision.
Charlie Munger
It's dangerous to short stocks.
Charlie Munger
Clever derivatives broke dozens of companies. It killed them. Bankrupt. We don't need these kinds of innovation in finance. It's OK to be boring in finance. What we want is innovation in widgets.
Charlie Munger
If you don't keep learning, other people will pass you by. Temperament alone won't do it - you need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time.
Charlie Munger
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
If we mix only a moderate minority share of turds with the raisins each year, probably no one will recognize what will ultimately become a very large collection of turds.
Charlie Munger
[Lawyers who file class-action securities suits] is not a group you would want to marry into your family. That said, more than half the time the people being sued by the Lerach firm are guilty of outrageous conduct. The problem is, they don't mind (suing) the other half. They are an equal opportunity litigator.
Charlie Munger
The laws of thermodynamic s are such that if the water is getting warmer - and I believe it is - the energy of the weather is going to go up.
Charlie Munger
Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company's owners are slim at best.
Charlie Munger
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
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.
Charlie Munger
It's human nature to extrapolate the recent past into the future, but it's terrible that managements go along with this.
Charlie Munger
Over many decades, our usual practice is that if something we like goes down, we buy more and more. Sometimes something happens, you realize you’re wrong, and you get out. But if you develop correct confidence in your judgment, buy more and take advantage of stock prices.
Charlie Munger
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
A lot of opportunities in life tend to last a short while, due to some temporary inefficiency... For each of us, really good investment opportunities aren't going to come along too often and won't last too long, so you've got to be ready to act and have a prepared mind.
Charlie Munger