85 Charlie Munger Quotes From The Successful American Businessman

Charlie Munger is an American who was born on 1 January 1924 and his net worth is expected to be at US$ 2 billion as of 19 February 2021.

His insights into business and life are unique, rare, and correct with unusual consistency. It's no wonder he has gained so much recognition and fame.

As a child, Munger worked at Buffett's grandfather's grocery store in Omaha, earning $2 for ten hours of labor. The Omaha native left the University of Michigan to become an Army meteorologist during World War II.

He earned a degree from Harvard Law School and met Buffett at a dinner party in 1959. Warren Buffett was a leader of Berkshire Hathaway and eventually, he became Buffett's, right-hand man. Charlie Munger became Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.

Munger is also chairman of the publisher of the newspaper Daily Journal Corp and sits on the board of retailer Costco. If you like this article, please visit Howard Schultz quotes and  Mark Cuban quotes.

Inspirational Charlie Munger Quotes

Here are some inspiring Charlie Munger quotes.

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

-Charlie Munger

2."To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. That world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of people."

-Charlie Munger

3."Being something and doing something that no one had done before are two different things."

-Charlie Munger

4."Those who keep learning will keep rising in life."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

7."People calculate too much and think too little."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger  

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

-Charlie Munger

10."Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

12."Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferrari's -I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

14."If you skillfully follow the multidisciplinary path, you will never wish to come back. It would be like cutting off your hands."

-Charlie Munger

15."Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is very useful thing."

-Charlie Munger  

16."Opportunity comes to the prepared mind."

-Charlie Munger

17."I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in classroom, which is natural. My family was into all that stuff, getting ahead through discipline, knowledge, and self-control."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger  

19."It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be intelligent."

-Charlie Munger

20."To this day, I have never taken a course anywhere, in chemistry, economics, psychology, or business."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

22."I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don't believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself."

-Charlie Munger

23."Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind...when you're young it's easy to drift into royalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member...and you're gradually ruining your mind."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

25."You should avoid sloth and unreliability."

-Charlie Munger

26."Generally speaking, envy, resentment, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thoughts. Self-pity gets fairly close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse."

-Charlie Munger

27."People should take away less than they're worth when they are favored by life...I would argue that when you rise high enough in American Business you've got a moral duty to be underpaid"

-Charlie Munger

28."Those of us who have been fortunate have a duty to give back. Whether one gives a lot as one goes along as I do, or a little and then a lot (when one dies) as Warren does, is a matter of personal preference."

-Charlie Munger

29."No man is fit to hold office who isn't perfectly willing to leave it at any time..."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger  

31."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."

-Charlie Munger

32."We have a passion for keeping things simple."

-Charlie Munger

Best Charlie Munger Quotes On Investment

Take a look at these Charlie Munger quotes on investment.

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

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger  

35."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."

-Charlie Munger  

36."A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price."

-Charlie Munger  

37."An intelligent investing is value investing, acquiring more than you are paying for."

-Charlie Munger

38."The big money is not in buying or selling, but in the waiting."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

40."When you borrow a man's car, always return it with a tank of gas."

-Charlie Munger

41."... the most famous composer in the world but was utterly miserable most of the time, and 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."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

44."Take a simple idea, and take it seriously."

-Charlie Munger

45."Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean."

-Charlie Munger

46."Wall Street has too much wealth and political power."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

48."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."

-Charlie Munger

49."We both (Warren Buffett) 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."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger  

51."Ninety-nine percent of the troubles that threaten our civilization come from too optimistic, therefore we should have a system where the accounting is a way more conservative."

-Charlie Munger

52."A lot of people think if you just had more process and more compliance- checks and double-checks and so forth-you could create a better world. We just try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust and be careful of whom we trust."

-Charlie Munger

53."Everywhere there is a large commission, there is a high probability of a rip-off."

-Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger Quotes On Life

Here are some of the best Charlie Munger quotes inspired by his life and experiences. These include Charlie Munger quotes on reading and its importance for life and great business.

54."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."

-Charlie Munger  

55."In my whole life, I have known no wise people...who didn't read all the time --none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads --at how much I read...They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out."

-Charlie Munger  

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

-Charlie Munger  

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

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

59."I would argue that passion is more important than brainpower."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger  

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

-Charlie Munger

62."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 and others don't..."

-Charlie Munger

63."Confucious said that real knowledge is knowing the extent of one's ignorance. Aristotle and Socrates said the same thing. Is it a skill that can be taught or learned? It probably can, if you have enough of a stake riding on the outcome..."

-Charlie Munger

64."Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It's not something you do just to advance in life...You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you learn after you leave here."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

66."Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Systematically you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts...At the end of the day if you live long enough most people get what they deserve."

-Charlie Munger  

67."One solution fits all is not the way to go. All these cultures are different. The right culture for the Mayo Clinic is different from the right culture at a Hollywood movie studio. You can't run all these places with a cookie-cutter solution."

-Charlie Munger  

68."There's a tendency to think that our present politicians are much worse than we had in the past. But we tend to forget how awful our politicians were in the past."

-Charlie Munger  

69."The highest form that civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust-not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another..."

-Charlie Munger

70."You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best-loved ideas."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger  

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

-Charlie Munger

74."You don't have to have the ability that quantum mechanics requires. You just have to know a few simple things and really know them."

-Charlie Munger

75."Don't drift into self-pity because it doesn't solve any problems."

-Charlie Munger  

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

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger

78."There is not more money to be made from law, but less time to enjoy it."

-Charlie Munger

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

-Charlie Munger  

80."There is no better teacher than history in determining the future...there are answers worth billions of dollars in 30$ history book."

-Charlie Munger

81."If something is too hard, we move on to something else. What could be more simpler than that?"

-Charlie Munger

82."I think that one should recognize the reality even when one doesn't like it; indeed, especially when one doesn't like it."

-Charlie Munger  

83."The best armor of old age is a well-spent life perfecting it."

-Charlie Munger  

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

-Charlie Munger  

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

-Charlie Munger  

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