About Life:
“I believe that life is a complete series of opportunity costs. You learn that you should marry the best person you can find who will accept you. Investing is the same process.” – Berkshire Hathaway Meeting 1997
“Another thing, of course, is that life will throw you some terrible and unfair blows. It doesn’t matter. Some people recover and some do not. And here I think Epictetus’ attitude is the best. He believed that every bad incident in life is an opportunity to act well. He believed that every bad incident in life is an opportunity to learn something and it is your duty not to sink into self-pity, but to use the terrible blow in a constructive way. It’s a very good idea.” – USC Law School Graduation Speech 2007
“Don’t be too envious, don’t be too resentful, don’t spend more than your income, stay cheerful despite your troubles, deal with trustworthy people, and do what you have to do. All these simple rules work really well to improve your life.” – CNBC Interview 2019
“With everything going up and interest rates down, what’s going to happen is that the millennial generation will have a very hard time getting rich compared to our generation. The gap between the rich and the poor in the rising generation will be much smaller. So Bernie won. He did it accidentally, but he won.” – Berkshire Hathaway Meeting 2021
About Learning:
“Without a learning method, you are like a man with one leg in a kick in the butt contest. That won’t work very well.” – Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2021
“In my whole life, I’ve never known wise people (in broad subjects) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero. You’d be amazed at the amount of reading Warren does – and the amount I do. My kids laugh at me. They think I’m a book with feet.” – Poor Charlie’s Almanack
“I constantly see people advancing in life who aren’t the smartest, and sometimes aren’t even the most serious, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they woke up, and oh my, how that helps – especially when you have a long time ahead of you.” – USC Law School Graduation Speech 2007
“I think living life correctly is just learning, learning, learning all the time.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2017
“Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior brings you a little temporary popularity with your peers, to hell with them.” – Poor Charlie’s Almanack
“Live within your means and save so that you can invest. Learn what you need to learn.” – “Absolutely True!: Behind the Scenes with Billionaire Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway”
About the Stock Market:
“I think value investors will face more difficulty now because there are so many of them competing for limited opportunities. So my advice to value investors is to get used to getting less.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2023
“There is a lot of money now in the hands of many smart people trying to outdo each other. It’s a completely different world from the world we started in.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2023
“What everyone understands is that everyone needs to have a large stake in the top 12 companies that are outperforming all others. You need at least two or three of them.” – Interview on the Acquired Podcast 2023
“I hope
“If everything else in America worked as well as Costco does, think about what a blessing that would be for all of us.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“I love everything about Costco. I am a complete addict, and I wouldn’t sell a share.” – Daily Journal Annual Shareholder Meeting 2023
On meme stocks: “What we are getting is outrageous excess and a danger to the country. Many people love the drunken brawl, and so far those are the ones who are winning, and many people are making money off of our brawl.” – Daily Journal Annual Shareholder Meeting 2021
On Investing:
“One of the silly things [that is taught] in modern college education is that a wide diversification in common stock investing is necessarily appropriate. It’s a stupid idea. It’s not easy to have a wide range of good opportunities that can be easily identified. And if you have only three, I would prefer to have my best ideas rather than my worst ideas. Now, some people can’t tell the difference between their best ideas and their worst ideas, and in the process of making a good investment decision, they believe their ideas are better than they are. I think we make fewer mistakes of that kind than others do. And that’s a blessing for us.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2023
“I find it so much easier to find four or five investments where I have a very reasonable chance of being above average. I think it’s much easier to find five of them than to find 100. I think people who argue for this diversification – by the way, I call it ‘diversification collapse’ – and I feel more comfortable owning two or three stocks that I think I know something about and where I think I have an edge.” – Daily Journal Annual Shareholder Meeting 2021
“If you are going to invest in stocks for a long time or in real estate, there will certainly be periods where there’s a lot of agony and other periods where there’s prosperity. And I think you just have to learn to live through it. As Kipling said, treat those impostors just the same. You have to deal with day and night in the same way. Does that bother you much? No. Sometimes it’s night, and sometimes it’s day. Sometimes there’s prosperity, and sometimes there’s a crash. I think in doing the best you can and hanging on as long as they let you.” – Daily Journal Annual Shareholder Meeting 2021
“Herd imitation calls for a reversion to the mean (just average performance).” – Poor Charlie’s Almanack
“I think the modern investor, to get ahead, has to get some stocks that are above average. They’re trying to get some stocks like Apple and Google and so forth, just to keep up, because they know a large portion of the profits that will come to all common stockholders combined will come from some of those super competitors.” – Interview in Wall Street Journal 2023
“There are huge advantages to the individual who takes a position that allows him to make some great investments and just sits there and does nothing: You pay less to brokers. You listen to less nonsense. And if you succeed, the government tax system gives you an extra 1, 2, or 3 percent a year.” – The Wisdom of Charlie Munger 1995 – 1998
“I have
A friend who works as a fisherman says: ‘I have a simple rule for success in fishing. Fish where the fish are.’ You want to fish where the good deals are. It’s simple. If the fishing is really bad where you are, maybe you should look for another spot to fish.” – Annual General Meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation 2020
“I believe the reason we fell into the silly investment management is best illustrated by a story I tell about the man who sold fishing gear. I asked him: ‘My God, they are purple and green. Do fish really take these lures?’ He told me: ‘Sir, I don’t sell to the fish.’ ” – “A lesson on simple and universal common sense as it relates to investment management and business”, speech from 1994 at the USC Business School
“The world is full of stupid gamblers and they will not achieve the same success that patient investors achieve.” – Interview in Weekly in Stocks 2018
“It takes character to sit with all that cash and do nothing. I didn’t get to where I am by chasing mediocre opportunities.” – Book by Charlie Munger
“Understanding the power of compound interest and the difficulty of achieving it is at the core of understanding a lot of things.” – Book by Charlie Munger
About new technology:
“Electric vehicles are coming on strong, and that is a very interesting development. Right now, it carries huge capital costs and massive risks, and I don’t like huge capital costs and massive risks.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2023
“I personally am skeptical of some of the hype that has entered AI. I think traditional intelligence works very well.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2023
Regarding regulating big tech companies: “I wouldn’t break them up. They have their small niches. Maybe Microsoft has a good niche, but it doesn’t own the land. I love these high-tech companies. I think capitalism should expect to get some big winners by accident.” – Podcast “Acquired” 2023
“Now we have algorithms trading with other computers. And people buy stocks without knowing anything, and advice is given by people who know even less. It’s a very crazy situation. … All this activity makes it easier for us.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“We will miss these newspapers terribly. Every paper … was an independent bastion of power. The economic stance was very strong … and the journalist’s ethics was to try to speak as it is. And they were really a branch of government – they called it the fourth estate, which means the fourth branch of government. It came about by accident. Now about 95% of [newspapers] will disappear and go away forever. And what do we get instead? We get a bunch of people who attract an audience because they are crazy. … I have my favorite agendas, and you have your favorite agendas, and we come together and we all get crazier when we appoint people to tell us what we want to hear. That is not a substitute for Walter Cronkite and all those great newspapers of old. We have suffered a tremendous loss here. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s creative destruction from capitalism, but it’s something terrible that has happened to our country.” – Annual General Meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation 2022
About cryptocurrencies:
“Cryptocurrency is not a currency, nor a commodity, nor a security. Rather, it is a gambling contract with almost 100% of the house; it is entered into in a country where traditional gambling contracts are only regulated by states that compete in laxity.” – Article in The Wall Street Journal 2023
“I am
“I am not proud of my country for allowing this nonsense – well, I call it nonsense of cryptocurrencies. It is worthless, it is crazy, it is not good, it will do nothing but harm, it is against society to allow it.” – 2023 Annual Meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation
“I think people who oppose my position are stupid. And therefore, I don’t think there’s a rational argument against my position.” – 2023 Annual Meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation
“When you deal with something like terrible cryptocurrencies, it cannot be talked about. I am ashamed of my country because so many people believe in this kind of nonsense and the government allows it to exist.” – 2023 Annual Meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation
“I am proud that I avoided it. It’s like some sexual diseases. I consider it beneath contempt. Some people think it’s a novelty, they celebrate a currency that is very useful in extortion and kidnapping [and] tax evasion.” – 2022 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
“When you have your retirement account and your friendly advisor suggests putting all the money in Bitcoin, just say no.” – 2022 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
“I hate the success of Bitcoin and don’t welcome a currency that is useful for kidnappers and extortionists, etc. And I don’t like transferring billions and billions and billions of additional dollars to someone who invented a new financial product out of thin air. So, I think I should humbly say that I think the whole damn evolution is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.” – 2021 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
About the U.S. economy and business:
“What makes capitalism work is the fact that if you are a young, capable, and hard-working person, if you refuse to work, you will suffer a lot of misery, and because of that misery, the whole economic system works. … If you take away that difficulty and say ‘you can stay home and get more than you would get if you came to work,’ then that is extremely disturbing for an economic system like ours. The next time we do that, I don’t think we should be very generous.” – 2022 Annual Meeting of the Daily Journal Corporation
“I usually don’t use official forecasts. I don’t let people do them for me because I don’t like to vomit on the desk, but I see it’s prepared in a very stupid way all the time, and many people believe in it, no matter how stupid it is. It’s an effective sales technique in America to put a stupid forecast on the desk.” – Herb Kay Lecture 2003 in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara
“Capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.” – Tao Charlie Munger
About mental models and decision-making frameworks:
“I have spent my life trying to avoid my own mental biases. I rub my nose in my own mistakes. B.) I try to keep it simple and fundamental as much as possible. And I love the concept of engineering for margin of safety. I am a kind of thinker who works well with fundamental and basic processes. I just try to avoid being stupid. I have a way of dealing with a lot of problems – I put them in what I call ‘too hard pile,’ and leave them there. I’m not trying to succeed in my ‘too hard pile.’” – 2020 Outstanding Graduate Award Interview at California Institute of Technology
“I have spent my life trying to avoid my own mental biases. I rub my nose in my own mistakes. B.) I try to keep it simple and fundamental as much as possible. And I love the concept of engineering for margin of safety. I am a kind of thinker who works well with fundamental and basic processes. I just try to avoid being stupid. I have a way of dealing with a lot of problems – I put them in what I call ‘too hard pile,’ and leave them there. I’m not trying to succeed in my ‘too hard pile.’” – 2020 Outstanding Graduate Award Interview at California Institute of Technology
“I am
I cannot talk about the world the way it is if you do not see the world as it is; it is like judging something through a distorted lens. All I want is to know where I will die, so I never go there. And a related thought: early on, write the required obituary – and act accordingly.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“If you don’t care whether you are rational or not, you won’t work on it. Then you will remain irrational and get bad results.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“Patience can be learned. Having a long attention span and the ability to focus on one thing for a long time is a huge advantage.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“You can learn a lot from deceased people. Read about the dead who you admire and those you dislike.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“Don’t jump from a sinking boat if you can swim to a boat that can sail.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“A great company keeps working after you are no longer there. A mediocre company won’t do that.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“Warren and I don’t focus on market froth. We look for good long-term investments and hold on to them stubbornly for a long time.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“Ben Graham said: ‘Day to day, the stock market is a voting machine; in the long run, it’s a weighing machine. If you make something more valuable, a wise person will notice that and start buying.’” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“Nothing is 100% certain when investing. Therefore, using leverage is dangerous. A series of great numbers hit by zero will always equal zero. Don’t count on getting rich twice.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“You don’t need to own a lot of things to become rich.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“You have to keep learning if you want to become a great investor. When the world changes, you must change.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“We hated railroad stocks for decades, but the world changed, and finally, the country had four massive railroads that were vital to the American economy. We were slow to recognize the change, but better late than never recognizing the change.” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
“Finally, I will add two short sentences from Charlie that have been his critical decisions for decades: ‘Warren, think bigger. You’re smart, and I’m right.’” – Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2022
Additional Excerpts from Warren Buffett:
From the Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, in the latest shareholder letter published on February 23:
“Charlie and I think almost the same way. But what takes me a page to explain, Charlie summarizes in one sentence. His version, moreover, is always more reasonable, logical, and artistically – some may honestly add – expressive.
Here are some of his thoughts, many inspired by a very recent podcast:
• The world is filled with foolish gamblers, and they will not achieve the same success that patient investors will.
• If you don’t see the world as it is, it is like judging something through a distorted lens.
• All I want is to know where I will die, so I never go there. And a related thought: early on, write the required obituary – and act accordingly.
•
If you don’t care whether you are rational or not, then you won’t work on it. Then you will remain irrational and get poor results.
Source: https://www.aol.com/45-memorable-charlie-munger-quotes-225308536.html
“`
Leave a Reply