751 Quotes by Charlie Munger

A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another.

In Gillette's case, they keep surfing along new technology which is fairly simple by the standards of microchips. But it's hard for competitors to do. So they've been able to stay constantly near the edge of improvements in shaving.

Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.

...the cost of being a publicly traded stock has gone way, way up. It doesn't make sense for a little company to be public anymore. A lot of little companies are going private to be rid of these burdensome requirements....

I have a black belt in chutzpah. I was born with it. Some people, like some of the women I know, have a black belt in spending. They were born with that. But what they gave me was a black belt in chutzpah.

When it gets into these spikes, with shortages and uproar and so forth, people go bananas, but that's capitalism.

If the technology hadn't changed, [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.

It's not a competency if you don't know the edge of it.

Using volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return.