Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
Charlie Munger
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Shows
Financial
Learners
Many
Cost
Apparently
Made
Terrible
Costs
Mistake
Statements
Show
Buying
Times
Nearly
Opportunity
Billions
Making
Slow
More quotes by Charlie Munger
You must value the business in order to value the stock.
Charlie Munger
[Lawyers who file class-action securities suits] is not a group you would want to marry into your family. That said, more than half the time the people being sued by the Lerach firm are guilty of outrageous conduct. The problem is, they don't mind (suing) the other half. They are an equal opportunity litigator.
Charlie Munger
Most people are too fretful, they worry to much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it's time.
Charlie Munger
I think there's an awful lot of twaddle and bullshit on EVA. The whole game is to turn retained earnings into more earnings. EVA has ideas about cost of capital that make no sense. Of course, if a company generates high returns on capital and can maintain this over time, it will do well. But the mental system as a whole does not work.
Charlie Munger
Stock-picking is like gambling: those who win well, seldom bet, but when they do, they bet heavily.
Charlie Munger
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.
Charlie Munger
Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step - and in the end, you're a moral sewer.
Charlie Munger
Just keep your head down and do your best.
Charlie Munger
We've had the most massive creation of wealth for people a lot younger than those who formerly got wealth in the history of the world. The world is full of young people who really want to get rich, and when I left school nobody thought it was a reasonable possibility.
Charlie Munger
So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.
Charlie Munger
We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire.
Charlie Munger
...all man's desired geometric progressions, if a high rate of growth is chosen, at last come to grief on a finite earth. And the social system for man on earth is fair enough, eventually, that almost all massive cheating ends in disgrace.
Charlie Munger
It's dangerous to short stocks.
Charlie Munger
The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.
Charlie Munger
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
Let me know what your problem is, and I will try to make it more difficult for you.
Charlie Munger
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
If you can buy the best companies, over time the pricing takes care of itself.
Charlie Munger
My idea of a good place to shop is Costco - it has these heavily marbled fillet steaks. The idea of eating some wheat thing and washing it down with carrot juice has never appealed to me.
Charlie Munger
I don't want to sell credit to people who are going to hurt themselves with it. You should only sell products that are good for the people who use them. Some disagree with this, but I know I'm right. That is to say, you're talking to a Republican who admires Elizabeth Warren.
Charlie Munger