On November 28, 2023, the world lost a mental giant. When he passed, Charlie Munger was a couple of months shy of his 100th birthday. It was a long life, filled with exploration, learning, and wit. Of all the things Munger did in his life, one of his most impactful was passing on wisdom to others.
What follows are some of his more memorable quotes. By no means is this exhaustive; rather, it’s a shallow dive in a deep pool.
Multidisciplinary Learning
In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero. You’d be amazed at 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.
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.
You’re not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You’re going to advance in life by what you’re going to learn.
If it’s wisdom you’re after, you’re going to spend a lot of time on your ass reading.
I think that a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time.
You can learn a lot from dead people. Read of the deceased you admire and detest.
If you don’t learn how to think, you’ll go through life as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition.
The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.
Mental Models
Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.
. . . I think the best question [in matters of your personal life], “Is there anything I can do to make my whole life and my whole mental process work better?” And I would say developing the habit of mastering the multiple models which underlie reality is the best thing you can do . . . it’s just so much fun—and it works so well.
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.
I had a brief immersion in elementary physics, prompted entirely by the unusual incentives provided by WWII. This immersion greatly improved my wisdom. What occurred was that I was given more models, so I was less like that ‘man with a hammer’.
The models that come from hard science and engineering are the most reliable models on this Earth.
You get lollapalooza effects when two, three or four forces are all operating in the same direction. And, frequently, you don’t get simple addition. It’s often like a critical mass in physics where you get a nuclear explosion if you get to a certain point of mass—and you don’t get anything much worth seeing if you don’t reach the mass.
Careers, Money, and Society
There are a lot of things in life way more important than money. All that said, some people do get confused. I play golf with a man who says, “What good is health? You can’t buy money with it.”
Generally, I’m not in favor of a social system that throws huge rewards to people who don’t improve the factories, don’t invent better systems, and so forth. Of course you can argue that I’m condemning myself. All I can say is it’s almost intentional.
The early Charlie Munger is a horrible career model for the young, because not enough was delivered to civilization in return for what was wrested from capitalism.
Investing
The game of investing is one of making better predictions about the future than other people. How are you going to do that? One way is to limit your tries to areas of competence. If you try to predict the future of everything, you attempt too much. You’re going to fail through lack of specialization.
Around here all I would say that if our predictions have been a little better than other people’s, it’s because we’ve tried to make fewer of them.
A few major opportunities, clearly recognized as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind, loving diagnosis involving multiple variables. And then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past.
Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.
Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification.
Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.
Character
In my whole life nobody has ever accused me of being humble. Although humility is a trait I much admire, I don’t think I quite got my full share.
Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it’s you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating.
I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.
Recognize reality even when you don’t like it—especially when you don’t like it.
Always take the high road, it’s far less crowded.
Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you ever want to get on that trolley?
Miscellaneous
A lot of success in life and success in business comes from knowing what you really want to avoid—like early death and a bad marriage.
I am personally skeptical of some of the hype that has gone into artificial intelligence. I think old-fashioned intelligence works pretty well.
If you mix raisins with turds, they are still turds.
All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.
I have nothing to add.
