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Authors Entrepreneur Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger

American investor and businessman · 1924–2023

Investor and Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman known for value investing and long-term business judgement.

Lifetime
Jan 1, 1924 – Nov 28, 2023 (age 99)
Primary field
Entrepreneur
Secondary fields
Philanthropist Writer
Influenced by
Benjamin Franklin
Friend with
Bill Gates
Tags
Berkshire HathawayValue investingMental modelsWorldly wisdomPoor Charlie’s AlmanackHarvard University

Charles Thomas Munger was an American investor, businessman and lawyer best known as Warren Buffett’s long-time business partner and vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he served in the US Army Air Corps during the Second World War before studying law at Harvard University. He later practised law and moved into property development and investment management.

Munger became chairman of Wesco Financial and joined Berkshire Hathaway as vice-chairman in 1978. He played an influential role in the company’s investment approach, encouraging a shift from buying statistically cheap businesses towards acquiring high-quality companies at reasonable prices. He was known for drawing on ideas from economics, psychology and other disciplines when assessing decisions and investments.

Munger also chaired the Daily Journal Corporation and supported educational and charitable institutions through substantial donations. His speeches and observations on investing, decision-making and human behaviour were collected in works including Poor Charlie’s Almanack. He died in California in 2023, aged 99.

Quotations

“If anything, I now believe even more strongly that reliability is essential for progress in life and while quantum mechanics is unlearnable for a vast majority, reliability can be learned to great advantage by almost anyone.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

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

Charlie Munger · 2017 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, 2017 · Primary source

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero. You’d be amazed 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.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“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.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“The great defect of scale, of course, which makes the game interesting, so that the big people don’t always win—is that as you get big, you get the bureaucracy.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Addiction can happen to any of us through a subtle process where the bonds of degradation are too light to be felt until when they are too strong to be broken.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“There’s a simple rule: fish where the fish are.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“If you want to change behaviors, you have to change motivations.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“I’m afraid that’s the way it [reality] is. If there are twenty factors and they interact some, you’ll have to learn to handle it—because that’s the way the world is. But you won’t find it that hard if you go at it Darwin-like, step by step with curious persistence. You’ll be amazed at how good you can get.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“The way to win is to work, work, work, work and hope to have a few insights. And you’re probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It’s just that simple.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“I find it quite useful to think of a free market economy—partly free market economy—as sort of the equivalent of an ecosystem. Just as animals flourish in niches, people who specialize in some narrow niche can do very well.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“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. Even if they don’t understand your reason, they’ll be more likely to comply.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“The life of Darwin demonstrates how a turtle may outrun a hare, aided by extreme objectivity, which helps the objective person end up like the only player without a blindfold in a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Everybody who is adult should save and not be stupidly spending money and defer gratification to get more later.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“Biological creatures ordinarily prefer effort minimization in routine activities and don’t like removals of long-enjoyed benefits.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Mankind invented a system to cope with the fact that we are so intrinsically lousy at manipulating numbers. It’s called the graph.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Trying to minimize taxes too much is one of the great standard causes of really dumb mistakes.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“A problem thoroughly understood is half solved.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question [of whether you are past the boundary] is to answer it.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, 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.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“I don’t play in a game where the other people are wise and I’m stupid. I look for a place where I’m wise and they’re stupid.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“Choose clients as you would friends.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“You’re much more likely to do well if you start out to do something feasible instead of something that isn’t feasible. Isn’t that perfectly obvious?”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and/or minimizing one or a few variables—like the discount warehourses of Costco.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Being able to recognize that you are wrong is a godsend.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“At Harvard Business School, the great quantitative thing that bonds the first-year class together is what they call decision tree theory. All they do is take high school algebra and apply it to real-life problems. And the students love it. They’re amazed to find that high school algebra works in life.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Our game is recognize a big idea when it comes along, when one doesn’t come along very often. Opportunity comes to the prepared mind.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“You don’t need to take the last dollar.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“If you don’t get elementary probability into your repertoire, you go through a long life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

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

Charlie Munger · No reliable source

Selected works

Speech collection · 2005 FEATURED WORK
Poor Charlie’s Almanack

A collection of Munger’s talks on investing, decision-making, psychology and the use of multidisciplinary mental models.

Shareholder meeting · 2017
2017 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

Buffett and Munger discuss Berkshire Hathaway, investing, corporate management, markets, technology and business judgement during the company’s 2017 annual meeting.

Shareholder meeting · 2020
Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting

Munger discusses Daily Journal, investing, technological change, corporate management and decision-making while answering questions from shareholders and attendees.

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