50 Charlie Munger Quotes On Life, Investing, And Success

Charles (Charlie) Munger is an American businessman, billionaire investor, and philanthropist. As a wildly successful investor, one may wonder exactly how he found success. For Charlie, his success story began with a little luck and a lot of determination. Shortly after meeting Warren Buffett at a dinner party in 1959, Charlie changed his life path from law to managing investments. Since 1978, he’s been well-known as Warren Buffett’s right-hand man and business partner as Vice Chairman for Berkshire Hathaway.

Due to Charlie Munger’s great success in investing, many people are surprised to learn that his secret to success didn’t require a fancy degree or lots of experience. Instead, Charlie has been open about owing his success to his perseverance, his willingness to fail, and his time spent reading.

At 98 and with an estimated net worth of 2.2 billion, Charlie’s path to success has clearly worked for him. Throughout the years, he’s offered wisdom on life and advice to those who are looking to dip their toes into the world of investing. Here are 50 of the best Charlie Munger quotes on life, investing, and success.

Charlie Munger Quotes on the Power of Knowledge

1. “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.”―Charlie Munger

2. “There is no better teacher than history in determining the future… There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.” ―Charlie Munger

3. “Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group…then to hell with them.”―Charlie Munger

4. “We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side.”―Charlie Munger

5. “I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.”―Charlie Munger

6. “Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.”―Charlie Munger

7. “Without the method of learning, you’re like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. It’s just not going to work very well.”―Charlie Munger

8. “Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multitasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading.”―Charlie Munger

9. “I think that a life properly lived is just learning, learn, learn all the time.”―Charlie Munger

10. “Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom.”―Charlie Munger

11. “It’s remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”―Charlie Munger

12. “The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”―Charlie Munger

13. “If you don’t keep learning, other people will pass you by. Temperament alone won’t do it – you need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time.”―Charlie Munger

14. “Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you’re really going to excel in it.”―Charlie Munger

15. “The game of life is the game of everlasting learning. At least it is if you want to win.”―Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger Quotes on the Secret to Investing

16. “It takes character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing. I didn’t get top where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.”―Charlie Munger

17. “Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.” ―Charlie Munger

18. “The world is full of foolish gamblers and they will not do as well as the patient investors.”―Charlie Munger

19. “Determine value apart from price; progress apart from activity; wealth apart from size.”―Charlie Munger

20. “Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification.”―Charlie Munger

21. “Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer.”―Charlie Munger

22. “The big money is not in the buying and the selling but in the waiting.”―Charlie Munger

23. “I have a friend who’s a fisherman he says, ‘I have a simple rule for success in fishing. Fish where the fish are.’ You want to fish where the bargains are. That simple. If the fishing is really lousy where you are you should probably look for another place to fish.”―Charlie Munger

24. “You’re looking for a mispriced gamble. That’s what investing is. And you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced. That’s value investing.”―Charlie Munger

25. “Live within your income and save so that you can invest. Learn what you need to learn.”―Charlie Munger

26. “A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments. And that is why we say that having a certain kind of temperament is more important than brains. You need to keep raw irrational emotions under control. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success.”―Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger Quotes on Finding Success

27. “It’s the work on your desk. Do well with what you already have and more will come in.”―Charlie Munger

28. “What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you’re unreliable it doesn’t matter what your virtues are. You’re going to crater immediately. Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability.”―Charlie Munger

29. “If any successes have come to me, it came because I insisted on thinking things through. That’s all I was capable of doing in life, was thinking pretty hard about trying to get the right answer, and then acting on it. I never learned to do anything else.”―Charlie Munger

30. “I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span.”―Charlie Munger

31. “Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferrari’s – I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.”―Charlie Munger

32. “If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.”―Charlie Munger

33. “Opportunity comes to the prepared mind.”―Charlie Munger

34. “Three rules for a career: Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself. Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire. Work only with people you enjoy.”―Charlie Munger

35. “Most people are too fretful, they worry too much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it’s time.”―Charlie Munger

36. “Hard work, honesty, if you keep at it, will get you almost anything.”―Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger Quotes on Living a Good Life

37. “To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.”―Charlie Munger

38. “Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day if you live long enough like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.”―Charlie Munger

39. “How to find a good spouse?
-the best single way is to deserve a good spouse.”―Charlie Munger

40. “Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets—and can be lost in a heartbeat.”―Charlie Munger

41. “The best armor of old age is a well-spent life perfecting it.”―Charlie Munger

42. “Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought. Self-pity gets fairly close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity Self-pity will not improve the situation.”―Charlie Munger

43. “Those of us who have been very fortunate have a duty to give back. Whether one gives a lot as one goes along as I do, or a little and then a lot (when one dies) as Warren does, is a matter of personal preference.”―Charlie Munger

44. “You don’t have a lot of envy, you don’t have a lot of resentment, you don’t overspend your income, you stay cheerful in spite of your troubles, you deal with reliable people and you do what you’re supposed to do. All these simple rules work so well to make your life better.”―Charlie Munger

45. “I’ve got some advice for the young: If you’ve got anything you really want to do, don’t wait until you’re 93.”―Charlie Munger

46. “Recognize reality even when you don’t like it – especially when you don’t like it.”―Charlie Munger

47. “There are always people who will be better at something than you are. You have to learn to be a follower before you become a leader.”―Charlie Munger

48. “Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world.”―Charlie Munger

49. “Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it’s you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating.”―Charlie Munger

50. “Always take the high road. It’s less crowded.”―Charlie Munger