Charlie Munger Quotes

There is nothing more counterproductive than envy. Someone in the world will always be better than you. Of all the sins, envy is easily the worst, because you can't even haven any fun with it. It's a total net loss.

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

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

So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.

Instead, you must do your multidisciplinary thinking in accord with Ben Franklin’s prescription in Poor Richard:52 “If you want it done, go. If not, send.

forth. And the other is to evaluate the psychological factors that cause subconscious conclusions, many of which are wrong.

You climb as hard as you can by just advancing one inch at a time. That's the secret of life.

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

Darwin’s result was due in large measure to his working method, which violated all my rules for misery and particularly emphasized a backward twist in that he always gave priority attention to evidence tending to disconfirm whatever cherished and hard-won theory he already had.

I think a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time.

Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try to 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 mental models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience, both vicarious and direct, on this latticework of models.

If, in your thinking, you rely entirely on others — often through purchase of professional advice — whenever outside a small territory of your own, you will suffer much calamity.

And he will also suffer from the psychological defect caught by the proverb “To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” The fifth helpful notion is that really big effects, lollapalooza effects, will often come only from large combinations of factors.

Opportunity doesn’t come often, so seize it when it does. Opportunity meeting the prepared mind — that’s the game.

Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.