“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time—none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads—and how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”

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

“Three rules for a career:<ol><li class="ql-align-center"> Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself; </li><li class="ql-align-center">Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire; </li><li class="ql-align-center">Work only with people you enjoy.”</li></ol>

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

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

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

“Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“Capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

Charles Thomas Munger (Age-99) (born January 1, 1924) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett; Buffett has described Munger as his closest partner.

Words of wisdom from Charlie Munger—Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner and the visionary Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway—collected and interpreted with an eye towards investing by David Clark, coauthor of the bestselling Buffettology series. Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1924, Charlie Munger studied mathematics at the University of Michigan, trained as a meteorologist at Cal Tech Pasadena while in the Army, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School without ever earning an undergraduate degree. Today, Munger is one of America’s most successful investors, the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and Warren Buffett’s business partner for almost forty years. Buffett says “Berkshire has been built to Charlie’s blueprint. My role has been that of general contractor.” Munger is an intelligent, opinionated businessman whose ideas can teach professional and amateur investors how to be successful in finance and life. Like The Tao of Warren Buffett and The Tao of Te Ching, The Tao of Charlie Munger is a compendium of pithy quotes including, “Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant” and “In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time—none, zero.” This collection, culled from interviews, speeches, and questions and answers at the Berkshire Hathaway and Wesco annual meetings, offers insights into Munger’s amazing financial success and life philosophies. Described by Business Insider as “sharp in his wit and investing wisdom,” Charlie Munger’s investment tips, business philosophy, and rules for living are as unique as his life story, intelligent as he clearly is, and as successful as he has been.

CHARLIE MUNGER

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CHARLIE MUNGER

1. Start with a purpose