Best Quotes by Charlie Munger: The name Charlie Munger, 95, doesn’t require any introduction for those involved in the investing world. If you are new to investing, you might have heard Charlie as Warren Buffett’s right hand. However, even individually, Charlie Munger is considered as one of the world’s wittiest investors.

Anyways, let me first introduce Charlie Munger to the newbies. Charlie Munger is an American investor, businessman, and self-made billionaire with a net worth of over $1.7 Billion (as of Feb 2019). He is the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate headed by Warren Buffett. And like Buffett, Charlie Munger is also an active philanthropist and has donated millions of his personal wealth for good causes.

Interestingly, if you look into his background, Charlie Munger never took any course in investing, finance or economics while he was in university. During World War II, Charlie studied meteorology at Caltech to become an army meteorologist. Later, he earned a degree in law from Harvard Law School.

Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett met in 1959 during a dinner party and got along immediately. Although they knew each other for a very long time, however, they built their informal partnership by investing together only in the 1970s. Later in the 1980s, both started the present structure of Berkshire Hathaway and have been running in profitably ever since by building wealth for themselves and their investors. Here’s what Warren Buffett thinks of his business partner Charlie Munger:

“We’ve got an extremely good partnership and business is more fun — just as life is more fun — with a good personal partner and to have a great business partner. You know it’s just — we’ve accomplished more but we’ve also had way more fun.” -Warren Buffett

Charlie Munger’s wisdom is an asset for all the investing community. The knowledge and success that he has gained in the past many decades is quite inspirational.  Therefore, in this post, we are going to highlight twenty-one evergreen quotes by Charlie Munger that every investor should know. Let’s get started.

21 All-time best Quotes by Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger Quotes on investing wisdom

“People calculate too much and think too little.”

“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 very intelligent.”

“What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience — both vicarious and direct — on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and fail in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.”

Charlie Munger Quotes on Wealth Creation

“The big money is not in the buying or the selling, but in the waiting.”

“What are the secrets of success? – one word answer: ”rational”

“It takes the character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing. I didn’t get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.”

“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.”

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.”

Charlie Munger Quotes on Importance of learning

“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.”

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

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads — and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.”

Also read: 31 Hand-Picked Best Quotes on Investing: Buffett, Munger, Graham & More.

Charlie Munger Quotes on Circle of Competence

“Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.”

“If something is too hard, we move on to something else. What could be simpler than that?” 

“I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.”

“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.” 

Charlie Munger Quotes on life rules to live by

“Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.”

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

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

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

“Take a simple idea, and take it seriously.”

Suggested Readings on Charlie Munger

Recommended Books

• Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition — Compiled by Peter D. Kaufman, CEO Peter Kaufman, Poor Charlie’s Almanack is the greatest collection of Charlie Munger’s speeches and talks.

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Kritesh Abhishek

Kritesh (Tweet here) is the Founder & CEO of Trade Brains & FinGrad. He is an NSE Certified Equity Fundamental Analyst with +7 Years of Experience in Share Market Investing. Kritesh frequently writes about Share Market Investing and IPOs and publishes his personal insights on the market.