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A few public hangings will really change behavior. One of our Presidents said if he could execute three people each year for no cause, it would make it a lot easier to govern. When someone said that's not enough, he said, Oh yes it is, because I'd publish the list of people under consideration.

Charlie Munger

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Charlie Munger
Age: 100
Born: 1924
Born: January 1
Business Person
Financier
Investor
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Omaha
Nebraska
Charlie Thomas Munger
Charles T. Munger
Charles Thomas Munger
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More quotes by 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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If the value of a company doesn't just scream out at you, it's too close.
Charlie Munger
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Avoid working directly under somebody you don't admire and don't want to be like.
Charlie Munger
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Strategic plans cause more dumb decisions than anything else in America.
Charlie Munger
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I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it.
Charlie Munger
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Capitalism is a pretty brutal place.
Charlie Munger
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I like people admitting they were complete stupid horses' asses. I know I'll perform better if I rub my nose in my mistakes. This is a wonderful trick to learn.
Charlie Munger
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If it happens every year like clockwork, what's so extraordinary about it?
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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Warren spends 70 hours a week thinking about investing .
Charlie Munger
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We have to have a special insight, or we'll put it in the 'too tough' basket. All of you have to look for a special area of competency and focus on that.
Charlie Munger
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I don't want to sell credit to people who are going to hurt themselves with it. You should only sell products that are good for the people who use them. Some disagree with this, but I know I'm right. That is to say, you're talking to a Republican who admires Elizabeth Warren.
Charlie Munger
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What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you're unreliable it doesn't matter what your virtues are. You're going to crater immediately. Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability.
Charlie Munger
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Sears had layers and layers of people it didn't need. It was very bureaucratic. It was slow to think. And there was an established way of thinking. If you poked your head up with a new thought, the system kind of turned against you. It was everything in the way of a dysfunctional big bureaucracy that you would expect.
Charlie Munger
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For years I have read the morning paper and harrumphed. There's a lot to harrumph about now.
Charlie Munger
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Black-Scholes works for short-term options, but if it's a long-term option and you think you know something [about the underlying asset], it's insane to use Black-Scholes.
Charlie Munger
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As I continued through Cicero's pages, I found much more material celebrating my way of life.
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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The more hard lessons you can learn vicariously rather than through your own hard experience, the better.
Charlie Munger
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If you can buy the best companies, over time the pricing takes care of itself.
Charlie Munger