Charlie Munger was an American investor, businessman, and philanthropist. He was best known for his role as the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and the business partner of Warren Buffett.
Munger was widely respected for his wisdom in both investment strategy and life philosophy. He emphasized long-term investment and the importance of understanding the business rather than the stock.
He was known for his sharp wit and clear thinking. Charlie Munger had many memorable maxims about investment, life, and decision-making.
Charlie Munger’s wisdom is distilled in the popular book Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger.
25 Best Charlie Munger quotes
Here are the top 25 quotes from legendary investor Charlie Munger:
“The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting.”
“People calculate too much and think too little.”
“Those who keep learning will keep rising in life.”
“If you keep learning all the time you have a huge advantage.”
“I don’t have a single achievement I’m all that proud of. I set out to have more common sense than most, and I’m pleased I did as well as I did. If I had to do it all over again, I think it’d be a lot harder.”
“Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris – I wanted independence. I desperately wanted it.”
“You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best-loved ideas.”
“This habit of committing far more time to learning and thinking than to doing is no accident.”
“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.”
“We (Warren Buffett and I) both 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.”
“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. Nobody’s that smart.”
“There is no better teacher than history in determining the future… There are answers worth billions of dollars in a history book.”
“An idiot, or a computer, can diversify a portfolio. But the whole trick of the game is to have a few times when you know something is better than average, and invest only where you have that extra knowledge. If that gets you a few opportunities, that’s enough.”
“You don’t have to have the kind of ability that quantum mechanics requires. You just have to know a few simple things and really know them.”
“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.”
“A majority of life’s errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do.”
“I think that people who are professional traders that go into trading cryptocurrencies, it’s just disgusting. It’s like somebody else is trading turds and you decide I can’t be left out.”
“Of course when people talk about common sense, they mean uncommon sense. Every time you hear that someone has common sense, it means that he has uncommon sense, and it’s much harder to have common sense than is generally thought.”
“Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom.”
“You’ll do better if you have passion for something in which you have aptitude. If Warren Buffett had gone into ballet, no one would have heard of him.”
“It’s amazing how intelligent it is just to spend some time sitting. A lot of people are way too active.”
“Live within your income and save so that you can invest. Learn what you need to learn.”
“I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.”
“To this day, I have never taken a course anywhere, in chemistry, economics, psychology, or business.”
“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.”
Jeff Mankin teaches financial literacy and Excel. He is the founder of Finally Learn.
