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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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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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Theory
Isolated
Wells
Facts
Pounds
Firsts
Form
Hang
Usable
Well
School
Remembered
Bang
First
Remember
Fail
Pound
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Together
Rule
Bangs
Really
Anything
Failing
Ems
Life
May
Students
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More quotes by 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 natural that you'd have more brains going into money management. There are so many huge incomes in money management and investment banking - it's like ants to sugar. There are huge incentives for a man to take up money management as opposed to, say, physics, and it's a lot easier.
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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The big money is not in the buying and selling ... but in the waiting.
Charlie Munger
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We have a passion for keeping things simple.
Charlie Munger
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In the 1930s, there was a stretch where you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's what's going on in today's private-equity world.
Charlie Munger
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I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I've reached that state.
Charlie Munger
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If you can buy the best companies, over time the pricing takes care of itself.
Charlie Munger
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Bull markets go to people's heads. If you're a duck on a pond, and it's rising due to a downpour, you start going up in the world. But you think it's you, not the pond.
Charlie Munger
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To atone, I teach and try to set an example... I love spreading this stuff around. Just because it's trite doesn't mean it isn't right. In fact, I like to say, 'If it's trite, it's right.'
Charlie Munger
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Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well.
Charlie Munger
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The cost of being a publicly traded stock has gone way, way up. It doesn't make sense for a little company to be public anymore. A lot of little companies are going private to be rid of these burdensome requirements.
Charlie Munger
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You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.
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 think corporate managers should learn to be better investors because it would make them better managers.
Charlie Munger
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And your brain doesn't naturally know how to think the way Zeckhauser knows how to play bridge. for example, people do not react symmetrically to loss and gain. Well maybe a great bridge player like Zeckhauser does, but that's a trained response. Ordinary people, subconsciously affected by their inborn tendencies.
Charlie Munger
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Since those don’t hit financial reports, the opportunities you had but didn’t accept, most people don’t bother thinking about them very much. At least that is a mistake we don’t make. We rub our own noses in our mistakes in blowing opportunities, as we just did.
Charlie Munger
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Almost all good businesses engage in 'pain today, gain tomorrow' activities.
Charlie Munger
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Move only when you have an advantage. It's very basic. You have to understand the odds and have the discipline to bet only when the odds are in your favor.
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