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Early Charlie Munger is a horrible career model for the young, because not enough was delivered to civilization in return for what was wrested from capitalism. And other similar career models are even worse.

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
Enough
Models
Even
Worse
Wrested
Early
Delivered
Civilization
Charlie
Career
Similar
Careers
Model
Return
Horrible
Young
Capitalism

More quotes by 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
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What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you're unreliable it doesn't matter what your virtues are. You're going to crater immediately. Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability.
Charlie Munger
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You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.
Charlie Munger
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Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate.
Charlie Munger
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Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.
Charlie Munger
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It's not a competency if you don't know the edge of it.
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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Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome
Charlie Munger
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The beauty of a financial institution is that there are a lot of ways to go to hell in a bucket. You can push credit too far, do a dumb acquisition, leverage yourself excessively - it's not just derivatives [that can bring about your downfall].
Charlie Munger
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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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Economics is in many respects the queen of the soft sciences. It's expected to be better than the rest. It's my view that economics is better at the multi-disciplinary stuff than the rest of the soft science. And it's also my view that it's still lousy.
Charlie Munger
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When you borrow a man's car, always return it with a tank of gas.
Charlie Munger
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A lot of share-buying, not bargain-seeking, is designed to prop stock prices up. Thirty to 40 years ago, it was very profitable to look at companies that were aggressively buying their own shares. They were motivated simply to buy below what it was worth.
Charlie Munger
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Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.
Charlie Munger
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The more hard lessons you can learn vicariously rather than through your own hard experience, the better.
Charlie Munger
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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.
Charlie Munger
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There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn’t awash in cash — and I don’t want to go back.
Charlie Munger
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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.
Charlie Munger
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I think the foundation at Berkshire [Buffett's stake in Berkshirewill pass to the Buffett Foundation upon his death] will be a plus because there will be a continuation of the culture. We'd still take in fine businesses run by people who love them.
Charlie Munger
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Some people seem to think there's no trouble just because it hasn't happened yet. If you jump out the window at the 42nd floor and you're still doing fine as you pass the 27th floor, that doesn't mean you don't have a serious problem. I would want to address the problem right now.
Charlie Munger