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I think you'll make more money in the end with good ethics than bad. Even though there are some people who do very well, like Marc Rich-who plainly has never had any decent ethics, or seldom anyway. But in the end, Warren Buffett has done better than Marc Rich-in money-not just in reputation.

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
Think
Better
Decent
Thinking
Wells
Reputation
Like
Well
Anyway
People
Done
Ethics
Even
Rich
Marc
Make
Though
Warren
Good
Money
Plainly
Never
Ends
Seldom

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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If you have competence, you know the edge. It wouldnt be a competence if you didnt know where the boundaries lie. Asking whether youve passed the boundary is a question that almost answers itself.
Charlie Munger
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The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It's the assets you have to worry about.
Charlie Munger
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Tthe first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form.... You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life.
Charlie Munger
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The theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you're going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.
Charlie Munger
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Missing out on some opportunity never bothers us. What's wrong with someone getting a little richer than you? It's crazy to worry about this.
Charlie Munger
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I regard it as very unfair, but capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.
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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Hard work, honesty, if you keep at it, will get you almost anything.
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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So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.
Charlie Munger
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If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.
Charlie Munger
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We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire.
Charlie Munger
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I don't spend much time regretting the past, once I've taken my lesson from it. I don't dwell on it.
Charlie Munger
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Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets - and can be lost in a heartbeat.
Charlie Munger
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Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification.
Charlie Munger
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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
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It's stupid the way people extrapolate the past -- and not slightly stupid, but massively stupid.
Charlie Munger
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I'm right, and you're smart, and sooner or later you'll see I'm right.
Charlie Munger
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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
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Quoting Demosthenes, 'For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.' I would rather make money playing a piano in a whorehouse than arguing that no cost is incurred when employees are paid in stock options instead of cash. I am not kidding.
Charlie Munger