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Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay were caricatures - they were easy to spot. They were almost psychopaths. But it's much harder to spot problems at companies like Royal Dutch [Shell].

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
Almost
Shells
Company
Royal
Easy
Spot
Psychopaths
Problem
Spots
Psychopath
Much
Lays
Caricatures
Like
Companies
Bernie
Harder
Dutch
Problems
Shell

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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If we've been a little more successful than other people, is because we always realised that the school of life was always open, and if you were not learning more you are falling behind.
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In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables - like the discount warehouses of Costco.
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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.
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Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better.
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To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
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Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well.
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We have the same problem as everyone else: It's very hard to predict the future.
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Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace. In a democracy, it often takes a scandal to trigger reform. Enron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a long, long time.
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The name of the game is continuing to learn. Even if you're very well trained and have some natural aptitude, you still need to keep learning.
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Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year
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Those of us who have been very fortunate have a duty to give back. Whether one gives a lot as one goes along as I do or a little and then a lot [when one dies] as Warrendoes is a matter of personal preference. I would hate to have people ask me for money all day long.
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Trying to prioritize among things we're unlikely to do is pretty fruitless.
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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.
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In investment management today, everybody wants not only to win, but to have a yearly outcome path that never diverges very much from a standard path except on the upside. Well, that is a very artificial, crazy construct. That's the equivalent in investment management to the custom of binding the feet of Chinese women
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We have a passion for keeping things simple.
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We've got great flexibility and a certain discipline in terms of not doing some foolish thing just to be active - discipline in avoiding just doing any damn thing just because you can't stand inactivity.
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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.
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Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it.
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Being short and seeing a promoter take the stock up is very irritating. It's not worth it to have that much irritation in your life.
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As I continued through Cicero's pages, I found much more material celebrating my way of life.
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