Charlie Munger Quotes - Page 20

Cicero's words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view.

Over the long term, the eclipse rate of great civilizations being overtaken is 100%. So you know how it's going to end. (Laughter) I'm more optimistic about the staying power of what's good in this country. But just because you have a wonderful spouse doesn't mean you should treat her badly. You have the feeling that some of the old virtues [that made this country great] are lessening. But there's so much good and so much strength left that I would not expect this country to suddenly founder.

We get these questions a lot from the enterprising young. It's a very intelligent question: You look at some old guy who's rich and you ask, 'How can I become like you, except faster?'

I'm used to people with very high IQs knowing how to recognize reality, but there's a huge human tendency where it may be instructive to think that whatever you're doing to succeed is all right.

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

Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.

Sears had layers and layers of people it didn't need. It was very bureaucratic. It was slow to think. And there was an established way of thinking. If you poked your head up with a new thought, the system kind of turned against you. It was everything in the way of a dysfunctional big bureaucracy that you would expect.

If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question (of whether you are past the boundary) is to answer it.

Berkshireis not as good as it was in terms of percentage compounding [going forward], but it's still a hell of a business.

If it happens every year like clockwork, what's so extraordinary about it?

I bet Richard Fuld doesn't have an ounce of contrition. It's just megalomania. When it's like that, you need rules to prevent catastrophe. When banks are borrowing the government's credit rating, you need rules to prevent stupid things.

If only I had the influence with my wife and children that I have in some other quarters!

Being short and seeing a promoter take the stock up is very irritating. It's not worth it to have that much irritation in your life.

As I continued through Cicero's pages, I found much more material celebrating my way of life.

...all man's desired geometric progressions, if a high rate of growth is chosen, at last come to grief on a finite earth. And the social system for man on earth is fair enough, eventually, that almost all massive cheating ends in disgrace.

How should the best parts of psychology and economics interrelate in an enlightened economist's mind?... I think that these behavioral economics...or economists are probably the ones that are bending them in the correct direction. I don't think it's going to be that hard to bend economics a little to accommodate what's right in psychology.

I won’t bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave.

I think the foundation at Berkshire [Buffett's stake in Berkshirewill pass to the Buffett Foundation upon his death] will be a plus because there will be a continuation of the culture. We'd still take in fine businesses run by people who love them.

In the LBO field there is a buried "covariance" with marketable equities, toward disaster in generally bad business conditions, and competition is now extremely intense.

I'm a bull on Berkshire Hathaway. There may be some considerable waiting, but I think there are some good days ahead.

You have a real asset-price bubble in places like parts of California and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

If the technology hadn't changed, they [newspapers] would still be great businesses. Network TV [in its heyday], anyone could run and do well. If Tom Murphy as running it, you'd do very well, but even your idiot nephew could do well. Fortunately, carbide cutting tools [such as those made by Iscar] don't have these types of substitutes.

The theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you're going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.

The quality of the medical care delivered, including the pharmaceutical industry, has improved a lot. I don't think it's crazy for a rich country like the USto spend 15% of GDP on healthcare, and if it rose to 16-17%, it's not a big worry.

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.