Tao of Charlie Munger

“In marriage, you shouldn’t look for someone with good looks and character. You look for someone with low expectations.”

“Most people are trained in one model—economics, for example—and try to solve all problems in one way.

You know the saying: ‘To the man with a hammer, the world looks like a nail.’ This is a dumb way of handling problems.”

“It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents. This is a great mental discipline.”

“Remember Louis Vincenti’s rule: ‘Tell the truth, and you won’t have to remember your lies.’”

“If you can’t somehow find yourself very interested in something, I don’t think you’ll succeed very much, even if you’re fairly smart.”

“It’s been my experience in life, if you just keep thinking and reading, you don’t have to work.”

“There’s no way that you can live an adequate life without many mistakes.

In fact, one trick in life is to get so you can handle mistakes. Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke.”

“I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don’t have any real knowledge.”

“I’ve heard Warren say a half a dozen times, ‘It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy.’”

“Three rules for a career:

1. Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself;
2. Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire;
3. Work only with people you enjoy.”

“The best way to get a good spouse is to deserve a good spouse.”

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.”

“I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best.

He thought that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and that your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in constructive fashion.

That is a very good idea.”

“Capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.”

“I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn’t like it; indeed, especially when one doesn’t like it.”

“I succeeded because I have a long attention span.”

“Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.”

“You should never, when faced with one unbelievable tragedy, let one tragedy increase into two or three because of a failure of will.”

“The desire to get rich fast is pretty dangerous.”

“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.”