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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.

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
Give
Accounting
Giving
Margins
World
Engineering
People
Damn
False
Aided
Safety
Balloon
Financial
Margin
Bigs
Balloons

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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We’re partial to putting out large amounts of money where we won’t have to make another decision.
Charlie Munger
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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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Anytime anybody offers you anything with a big commission and a 200-page prospectus, don't buy it. Occasionally, you'll be wrong if you adopt Munger's Rule. However, over a lifetime, you'll be a long way ahead - and you will miss a lot of unhappy experiences.
Charlie Munger
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In fact I've probably never seen such a wide moat.
Charlie Munger
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Well in the history of the See's Candy Company they always say, I never did it before, and I'm never going to do it again. And we cashier them. It would be evil not to, because terrible behavior spreads.
Charlie Munger
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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.
Charlie Munger
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You must value the business in order to value the stock.
Charlie Munger
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I've heard that one-half of the students at elite schools want to go into private equity or hedge funds. They want to keep up with their age cohorts at Goldman. This can't possibly end well in terms of meeting these expectations.
Charlie Munger
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I feel that by getting rich in the way I did, I think my own example has hurt my own country.
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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It took us months of buying all the Coke stock we could to accumulate $1 billion worth - equal to 7% of the company. It's very hard to accumulate major positions.
Charlie Munger
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We have the same problem as everyone else: It's very hard to predict the future.
Charlie Munger
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At Berkshire Hathaway we do not like to compete against Chinese manufacturers.
Charlie Munger
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We're the tortoise that has outrun the hare because it chose the easy predictions.
Charlie Munger
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There has never been a master plan. Anyone who wanted to do it, we fired because it takes on a life of its own and doesn't cover new reality. We want people taking into account new information.
Charlie Munger
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Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.
Charlie Munger
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Trying to prioritize among things we're unlikely to do is pretty fruitless.
Charlie Munger
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Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime.
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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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