Remembering Charlie Munger: 55 Timeless Quotes from a Wise Mind

Dear LinkedIn Community,

It is with heavy hearts that we bid farewell to a true icon, Charlie Munger, who recently passed away. Munger, renowned as Warren Buffett's longtime business partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, leaves behind a legacy of wisdom, wit, and unparalleled insights into the world of business and life.

As we reflect on the profound impact Munger had on the world of investing, decision-making, and beyond, let's celebrate his enduring wisdom through 55 of his most memorable quotes:

1. "Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up."
2. "The best thing a human being can do is help another human being know more."
3. "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."
4. "The best armor of old age is a well-spent life preceding it."
5. "The desire to get rich fast is pretty dangerous."
6. "The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want."
7. "In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time."
8. "The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward for."
9. "I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge."
10. "If you get a lot of action, I think the market is teaching you to trade too much."
11. "The best thing a fellow can do is stay solvent and keep alive."
12. "The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting."
13. "Understanding how to be a good human being and understand a little of what life is about doesn’t hurt your investing."
14. "A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price."
15. "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."
16. "The game of life is the game of everlasting learning. At least it is if you want to win."
17. "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."
18. "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."
19. "In the end, what’s needed is power, and men’s belief in their future power."
20. "It takes character to sit with all that cash and do nothing. I didn’t get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities."
21. "We both (Buffett and Munger) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business."
22. "If you always tell people why, they’ll understand it better, they’ll consider it more important, and they’ll be more likely to comply."
23. "Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy."
24. "A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price."
25. "We have to deal in things that we’re capable of understanding."
26. "We are not genetically programmed to understand probability. When we were evolving in small bands on the African veldt, we couldn’t handle the math."
27. "Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer."
28. "I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you."
29. "The way complex adaptive systems work and the way mental constructs work is that problems frequently get easier, I’d say, by code of conduct. In other words, what you have to learn is to hang in there when the world is going against you and recognize that irrationality frequently will prevail in the short term."
30. "It’s not given to human beings to have such talent that they can just know everything about everything all the time. But it is given to human beings who work hard at it—who look and sift the world for a mispriced bet—that they can occasionally find one."
31. "If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we’d have a pretty average record. It wasn’t hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along, you pounced on them with vigor."
32. "We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side."
33. "In the 21st century, financial education is a must. I don’t see how you survive in the world without having some literacy in finance."
34. "The best thing you can do is learn from others. The biggest risk is not learning."
35. "The phone is not ringing off the hook with good ideas."
36. "People always want a formula—I can’t give them a formula. But I can give them a recipe."
37. "The idea of excessive diversification is madness."
38. "The best investment you can make is in yourself."
39. "A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc."
40. "I think the reason why we got into such idiocy in investment management is best illustrated by a story that I tell about the guy who sold fishing tackle."
41. "The best thing you can do is learn from other people's mistakes. Why do you need to learn from your own mistakes when you can learn from others?"
42. "I have a name for people who went to the extremes—like my idiot competitor who bought all of those Internet stocks. I call them 'dart-throwers.'"
43. "The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it’s going to kill you."
44. "There is no way you can live an adequate life without many mistakes."
45. "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."
46. "We have to deal in things we’re capable of understanding. Once you get into debt, it’s hell to get out. Don’t let credit card debt carry over. You can’t get ahead if you keep borrowing."
47. "The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more."
48. "To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
49. "There’s no way that you can live an adequate life without many mistakes."
50. "You need to know the big ideas in the big disciplines and use them routinely—all of them, not just a few."
51. "The best thing a fellow can do is stay solvent and keep alive."
52. "I think the reason why we got into such idiocy in investment management is best illustrated by a story that I tell about the guy who sold fishing tackle."
53. "You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, 'Here are three things.' You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life."
54. "We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side."
55. "Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer."

Charlie Munger's wisdom extends far beyond the realm of finance, touching on life, learning, and decision-making. As we remember and honor his contributions, let us reflect on these timeless quotes and strive to incorporate his invaluable insights into our own professional and personal journeys.

Rest in peace, Charlie Munger. Your legacy will continue to inspire generations to come.

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