80 Charlie Munger Quotes and Lessons on Money, Investing and Life

Who Was Charlie Munger?

Charlie Munger (1924–2023) was an American investor, businessman, lawyer, and philanthropist. He was best known as the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and the longtime business partner of Warren Buffett.

Munger was famous for his practical approach to investing, business, learning, and decision-making. He believed in reading widely, thinking independently, controlling emotions, avoiding major mistakes, and becoming a little wiser every day.

His ideas continue to influence investors and people around the world.

Munger's philosophy of life, What makes Munger especially interesting is that his advice goes far beyond investing.

He talked about:   Money → Investing → Business → Psychology → Reading → Decision-making → Relationships → Life

That is why his quotes remain popular even among people who have no interest in the stock market.

 Charlie Munger Quotes on Investing

1. The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting.

2. Those who keep learning, will keep rising in life.

3. Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris - I wanted independence. I desperately wanted it.

4. There isn't a single formula. You need to know a lot about business and human nature and the numbers. It is unreasonable to expect that there is a magic system that will do it for you.

5. There are three ways to go broke: 'liquor, ladies and leverage'.

6. There is no better teacher than history in determining the future. There are answers worth billions of dollars in a history book.

7. We have three baskets for investing: yes, no, and too tough to understand.

8. Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There's a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?

9. Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were, when you woke up.

10. I constantly see people rise in life who aren't the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they're learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up.

11. Live within your income and save so that you can invest. Learn what you need to learn.

12. It's remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

13. Take one simple idea and take it seriously.

14. In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time - none, zero.

15. A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.

16. Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.

Charlie Munger Quotes on Money & Wealth

17. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads & how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.

18. People calculate too much & think too little.

19. If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that's a great gift...

20. Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.

21. All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there.

22. I think that, every time you see the word EBITDA, you should substitute the words "bullshit earnings".

23. We have three baskets: in, out, and too tough. We have to have a special insight, or we'll put it in the "too tough" basket.

24. Do the work on your desk. Do well with what you already have and more will come in.

25. To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.

26. It's not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.

27. When you mix raisins and turds, you still get turds.

28. You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guy on average, for a long time.

29. Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom.

30. It takes character to sit with all that cash & do nothing. I didn't get to the top where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.

31. If you keep learning all the time you have a huge advantage.

32. Being something & doing something that no one had done before are two different things.

Charlie Munger Quotes on Learning & Thinking

33. A majority of life's errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do.

34. The best thing a human can do is to help another human being know more.

35. The habit of committing far more time to learning and thinking than to doing is no accident.

36. One of the greatest ways to avoid trouble is to keep it simple... the system often goes out of control.

37. Opportunity comes to the prepared mind.

38. You should avoid sloth and unreliability.

39. I try to get rid of people who confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge.

40. I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out.

41. Simplicity has a way of improving performance by enabling us to better understand what we are doing.

42. I paid no attention to the territorial boundaries of academic disciplines and I just grabbed all the big ideas that I could.

43. Envy, resentment, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought. Self-pity gets fairly close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse.

44. Those of us who have been fortunate have a duty to give back to society.

45. We recognized early on that smart people do very dumb things, and we wanted to know why and who, so that we could avoid them.

46. It's waiting that helps you as an investor and a lot of people just can't stand to wait. If you didn't get the deferred-gratification gene, you've got to work very hard to overcome that.

47. All intelligent investing is value investing, acquiring more than you are paying for.

48. A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they've got terrible temperaments.

Charlie Munger Quotes on Business & Decision-Making

49. The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It's the assets you have to worry about.

50. The most famous composer in the world was utterly miserable most of the time, and one of the reasons was because he always overspent his income. This was Mozart. If Mozart couldn't get by with this kind of asinine conduct, I don't think you should try.

51. We're not interested in taking substantial chances of taking a lot of very decent people back to 'Go' so we can have one more zero on our net worth.

52. Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.

53. You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments, especially when they challenge your best-loved ideas.

54. Warren Buffett and I insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.

55. Our game is to recognize a big idea when it comes along, when one doesn't come along very often.

56. Ninety-nine percent of the troubles that threaten our civilization come from being too optimistic.

57. We try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust & be careful of whom we trust.

58. Assume life will be really tough & then ask if you can handle it. If the answer is yes, you've won.

59. Just because you like it does not mean that the world will necessarily give it to you.

60. I would argue that passion is more important than brainpower.

61. Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets and can be lost in a heartbeat.

62. Is there such a thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am.

63. Always take the high road, it's far less crowded.

64. You need patience, discipline, and agility to take losses and adversity without going crazy.

Charlie Munger Quotes on Life & Wisdom

65. No wise pilot, no matter how great his talent and experience, fails to use a checklist.

66. There is no way you can live an adequate life without making mistakes.

67. Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.

68. Don't let fear or greed drive your decisions.

69. Develop a "latticework of mental models" to help think more clearly and make better decisions.

70. Good businesses are ethical businesses. A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail.

71. Don't be afraid to admit when you don't know something.

72. It's better to hang out with people better than you.

73. Wall Street has too much wealth and political power.

74. I've seen so much folly and stupidity on the part of our major philanthropic groups, including the World Bank. I really have more confidence in building up the more capitalistic ventures like Costco.

75. It's like the slaughter of the innocents. It makes the people who run Las Vegas seem like good people.

76. Most people are too fretful, they worry too much. Success means being very patient but aggressive when it's time.

77. Some people are extraordinarily good at knowing the limits of their knowledge because they have to be.

78. The iron rule of nature is: You get what you reward for. If you want ants to come, you put sugar on the floor.

79. Part of what you must learn is how to handle mistakes and new facts that change the odds. Life, in part, is like a poker game wherein you have to learn to quit sometimes when holding a much-loved hand.

80. Another thing, of course, is that life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows. It doesn't matter. And some people recover