Charlie Munger Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Charlie Munger quotes, Charlie Munger sayings, and Charlie Munger proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

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 after you leave here. Charlie Munger
Go to bed smarter than when you woke up. Charlie Munger
You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention. Charlie Munger
Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace. In a democracy, it often takes a scandal to trigger reform. Enron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a long, long time. Charlie Munger
Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don't design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting. Charlie Munger
Accounting is a big subject and there are huge forces in play. The entire momentum of existing thinking and existing custom is in a direction that allows terrible follies to happen, and the terrible follies have terrible consequences. Charlie Munger
No CEO examining books today understands what the hell is going on. Charlie Munger
Investors can have 90% of their wealth in a single company, if it is the right company. Charlie Munger
All intelligent investing is value investing – acquiring more than you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock. Charlie Munger
Opportunity comes to the prepared mind. Charlie Munger
We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric. Charlie Munger
Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it. Charlie Munger
There's more honor in investment management than in investment banking. Charlie Munger
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
In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you've just described hell. Charlie Munger
Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome. Charlie Munger
It's a rare business that doesn't have a way worse future than it has a past. Charlie Munger
All sensible investing is value investing. Charlie Munger
I do not think you can trust bankers to control themselves. They are like heroin addicts. Charlie Munger
For one of the most successful business strategies is to be a contrarian investor— to go in the opposite direction — to buy when others are selling. Charlie Munger
The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It's such a simple idea. It's the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. Charlie Munger
There is more dementia about finance than there is about sex. Charlie Munger
By and large, I don't think too much of finance professors. It is a field with witchcraft. Charlie Munger
Where you have complexity, by nature you can have fraud and mistakes...This will always be true of financial companies, including ones that run by governments. If you want accurate numbers from financial companies, you're in the wrong world. Charlie Munger
In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time, none. Zero. Charlie Munger
Assume life will be really tough, and then ask if you can handle it. If the answer is yes, you've won. Charlie Munger