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Money Quotes by Charlie Munger

54 Money quotes by Charlie Munger

All Money quotes Charlie Munger’s page

Charlie Munger warns about financial complexity. He argues that simple, boring approaches often beat flashy innovations that can cause fraud. He also says you don’t need perfect wisdom to get rich; being a little better than average for a long time can be enough.

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If (investing) weren't a little difficult, everybody would be rich.

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Wall Street has too much wealth and political power.

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'F.A.S.B' ... 'Financial Accounts Still Bogus'.

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The big money is not in the buying and selling ... but in the waiting.

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A lot of our respected financial institutions are just casinos in drag.

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We don't like trading agony for money

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Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well.

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You don't have to have perfect wisdom to get very rich - just a bit better than average over a long period…

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We’re partial to putting out large amounts of money where we won’t have to make another decision.

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Missing out on some opportunity never bothers us. What's wrong with someone getting a little richer than you? It's crazy to worry…

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A director who gets $150,000 per year from a company and needs the money is not independent.

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Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.

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I'm proud to be associated with the value system at Berkshire Hathaway; I think you'll make more money in the end with…

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Why should it be easy to do something that, if done well, two or three times, will make your family rich for…

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It's hard to predict what will happen with two brands in a market. Sometimes they will behave in a gentlemanly way, and…

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After nearly making a terrible mistake not buying See's, we've made this mistake many times. We are apparently slow learners. These opportunity…

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We get these questions a lot from the enterprising young. It's a very intelligent question: You look at some old guy who's…

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If all you succeed in doing in life is getting rich by buying little pieces of paper, it's a failed life. Life…

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There are a lot of things in life way more important than money. All that said, some people do get confused. I…

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A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy…

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If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we'd have a pretty average record. It wasn't hyperactivity, but a hell of a…

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If all you needed to do is to figure out what company is better than others, everyone would make a lot of…

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Where you have complexity, by nature you can have fraud and mistakes. You'll have more of that than in a company that…

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there are all kinds of wonderful new inventions that give you nothing as owners except the opportunity to spend a lot more…

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I don't have too much interest in teaching other people how to get rich. And that isn't because I fear the competition…

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While no real money came down, my family gave me a good education and a marvelous example of how people should behave,…

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I have concluded that most PhD economists under appraise the power of the common-stock-based "wealth effect," under current extreme conditions... "Wealth effects"…

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We believe there should be a huge area between everything you should do and everything you can do without getting into legal…

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When we were young, there weren't very many smart people in the investment world. You should have seen the people in the…

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You'll find many markets where bottlers of Pepsi and Coke both make a lot of money and many others where they destroy…

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Clever derivatives broke dozens of companies. It killed them. Bankrupt. We don't need these kinds of innovation in finance. It's OK to…

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With so much money riding on reported numbers, human nature is to manipulate them. And with so many doing it, you get…

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I think it would be a great improvement if there were no D&O insurance . The counter-argument is that no-one with any…

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Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in…

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[GEICO] got to thinking that, because they were making a lot of money, they knew everything. And they suffered huge losses. All…

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Here's one truth that perhaps your typical investment counselor would disagree with: if you're comfortably rich and someone else is getting richer…

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The general systems of money management [today] require people to pretend to do something they can't do and like something they don't.…

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It's natural that you'd have more brains going into money management. There are so many huge incomes in money management and investment…

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There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.'…

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The idea of caring is that someone is making money faster [than you are] is one of the deadly sins. Envy is…

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More by Charlie Munger

Almost all good businesses engage in 'pain today, gain tomorrow' activities.

If you want good behavior, don't pay on a commission basis. Our judges aren't paid so much a case. We keep them pretty well…

Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group then to…

I think time and time again, in reality, psychological notions and economic notions interplay, and the man who doesn't understand both is a damned…

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and…

The tax code gives you an enormous advantage if you can find some things you can just sit with.

The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you. And…

Some years ago one oil company bought a fertilizer company, and every other major oil company practically ran out and bought a fertilizer company.…

They [Mc Donalds] take people and give them a first job, which enables them to get a second job. They do a very good…

What good is envy? It’s the one sin you can’t have any fun at.

We believe that almost all really good investment records will involve relatively little diversification. The basic idea that it was hard to find good…

It is way less certain to be a wonderful business in the future. The threat is alternative mediums of information. Every newspaper is scrambling…

In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you've just described hell.

We have to have a special insight, or we'll put it in the 'too tough' basket. All of you have to look for a…

I've heard that one-half of the students at elite schools want to go into private equity or hedge funds. They want to keep up…