Quote

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

More quotes by Charlie Munger

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If you don't keep learning, other people will pass you by. Temperament alone won't do it - you need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time.
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Avoid working directly under somebody you don't admire and don't want to be like.
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You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, 'Here are three things.' You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life.
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See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.
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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.
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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.
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We have a history when things are really horrible of wading in when no one else will.
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Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world.
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Every business tries to turn this year's success into next year's greater success. It's hard for me to see why Microsoft is sinful to do this. If it's a sin, then I hope all of Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries are sinners. Someone whose salary is paid by U.S.taxpayers is happy to dramatically weaken the one place where we're winning big?!
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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.
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You have to learn to be a follower before you become a leader.
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If mutual fund directors are independent, then I'm the lead character in the Bolshoi Ballet.
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Most people are too fretful, they worry to much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it's time.
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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To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Charlie Munger
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Cicero's words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view.
Charlie Munger
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It's a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes.
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.
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Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition.
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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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