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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
Lawyer
Omaha
Nebraska
Charlie Thomas Munger
Charles T. Munger
Charles Thomas Munger
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More quotes by Charlie Munger

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Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke: you have made an enormous commitment to something. You have poured effort and money in. And the more you put in, the more that the whole consistency principle makes you think, Now it has to work. If I put in just a little more, then it will work.
Charlie Munger
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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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Almost all good businesses engage in 'pain today, gain tomorrow' activities.
Charlie Munger
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I bet Richard Fuld doesn't have an ounce of contrition. It's just megalomania. When it's like that, you need rules to prevent catastrophe. When banks are borrowing the government's credit rating, you need rules to prevent stupid things.
Charlie Munger
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I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span.
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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It's in the nature of stock markets to go way down from time to time. There's no system to avoid bad markets. You can't do it unless you try to time the market, which is a seriously dumb thing to do. Conservative investing with steady savings without expecting miracles is the way to go.
Charlie Munger
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You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best loved ideas.
Charlie Munger
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The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.
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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It would be easier to screw up American Express than Coke or Gillette, but it's an immensely strong business.
Charlie Munger
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Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.
Charlie Munger
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A lot of our respected financial institutions are just casinos in drag.
Charlie Munger
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Beta and modern portfolio theory and the like - none of it makes any sense to me.
Charlie Munger
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Understanding how to be a good investor makes you a better business manager and vice versa.
Charlie Munger
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We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.
Charlie Munger
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Strategic plans cause more dumb decisions than anything else in America.
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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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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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