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You have to realize the truth of biologist Julian Huxley's idea that 'Life is just one damn relatedness after another' So you must have the models, and you must see the relatedness and the effects from the relatedness.

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
Life
Effects
Realize
Realizing
Relatedness
Idea
Huxley
Another
Julian
Truth
Biologist
Ideas
Damn
Must
Models

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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After nearly making a terrible mistake not buying See's, we've made this mistake many times. We are apparently slow learners. These opportunity costs don't show up on financial statements, but have cost us many billions.
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See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.
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We want very good leaders who have a lot of power.
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While no real money came down, my family gave me a good education and a marvelous example of how people should behave, and in the end that was more valuable than money. Being surrounded by the right values from the beginning is an immense treasure. Warrenhad that. It even has a financial advantage.
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The tax code gives you an enormous advantage if you can find some things you can just sit with.
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A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another.
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If the technology hadn't changed, they [newspapers] would still be great businesses. Network TV [in its heyday], anyone could run and do well. If Tom Murphy as running it, you'd do very well, but even your idiot nephew could do well. Fortunately, carbide cutting tools [such as those made by Iscar] don't have these types of substitutes.
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Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom.
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I see almost no change in the price of the composite product that flows through Costco I don't feel sorry for the people who pay $27 million for an 8,000-square-foot condo in Manhattan. So inflation comes in places.
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If we mix only a moderate minority share of turds with the raisins each year, probably no one will recognize what will ultimately become a very large collection of turds.
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Accounting is a big subject and there are huge forces in play. The entire momentum of existing thinking and existing custom is in a direction that allows terrible follies to happen, and the terrible follies have terrible consequences.
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A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.
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You don't want to be like the motion picture exec who had so many people at his funeral, but they were there just make sure he was dead. Or how about the guy who, at his funeral, the priest said, Won't anyone stand up and say anything nice for the deceased? and finally someone said, Well, his brother was worse.
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If you want to understand science, you have to understand math. In business, if you're enumerate, you're going to be a klutz. The good thing about business is that you don't have to know any higher math.
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We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire.
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If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question (of whether you are past the boundary) is to answer it.
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In engineering, people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don't give a damn about safety. They let it balloon and balloon and balloon. It's aided by false accounting.
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Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step - and in the end, you're a moral sewer.
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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.
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There are two kinds of businesses: The first earns 12%, and you can take it out at the end of the year. The second earns 12%, but all the excess cash must be reinvested - there's never any cash. It reminds me of the guy who looks at all of his equipment and says, 'There's all of my profit.' We hate that kind of business.
Charlie Munger