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Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don't design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting.

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
Safety
Airplanes
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Margins
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Bridges
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More quotes by Charlie Munger

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One of the first big bubbles, of course, was the huge and horrible South Sea Bubble in England. And the aftermath was interesting. Many of you probably don't remember what happened after the South Sea Bubble, which caused an enormous financial contraction, and a lot of pain. They banned publicly traded stock in England for decades.
Charlie Munger
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You must value the business in order to value the stock.
Charlie Munger
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Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate.
Charlie Munger
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Anytime anybody offers you anything with a big commission and a 200-page prospectus, don't buy it. Occasionally, you'll be wrong if you adopt Munger's Rule. However, over a lifetime, you'll be a long way ahead - and you will miss a lot of unhappy experiences.
Charlie Munger
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You must know the big ideas in the big disciplines, and use them routinely - all of them, not just a few. Most people are trained in one model - economics, for example - and try to solve all problems in one way. You know the old saying: to the man with a hammer, the world looks like a nail. This is a dumb way of handling problems.
Charlie Munger
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We've had the most massive creation of wealth for people a lot younger than those who formerly got wealth in the history of the world. The world is full of young people who really want to get rich, and when I left school nobody thought it was a reasonable possibility.
Charlie Munger
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Capitalism is a pretty brutal place.
Charlie Munger
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We have a higher percentage of the intelligentsia engaged in buying and selling pieces of paper and promoting trading activity than in any past era. A lot of what I see now reminds me of Sodomand Gomorrah. You get activity feeding on itself, envy and imitation. It has happened in the past that there came bad consequences.
Charlie Munger
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Like the stocks of both Berkshire and Wesco to trade within hailing distance of what we think of as intrinsic value. When it runs up, we try to talk it down. That's not at all common in Corporate America, but that's the way we act.
Charlie Munger
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I think the main figure that matters to all of us, including people in the media, is: How does GDP per capita grow? And those figures have been very good. There is a huge flux both up and down, so it isn't like we're all static in status. What's important is that pie grows.
Charlie Munger
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Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.
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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One metric catches people. We prefer businesses that drown in cash. An example of a different business is construction equipment. You work hard all year and there is your profit sitting in the yard. We avoid businesses like that. We prefer those that can write us a check at the end of the year.
Charlie Munger
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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
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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
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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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Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step - and in the end, you're a moral sewer.
Charlie Munger
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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
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If you always tell people why, they'll understand it better, they'll consider it more important, and they'll be more likely to comply.
Charlie Munger
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Stock-picking is like gambling: those who win well, seldom bet, but when they do, they bet heavily.
Charlie Munger