751 Quotes by Charlie Munger

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

The basic concept of value to a private owner and being motivated when you're buying and selling securities by reference to intrinsic value instead of price momentum - I don't think that will ever be outdated.

There's a lot wrong [with American universities]. I'd remove 3/4 of the faculty - everything but the hard sciences. But nobody's going to do that, so we'll have to live with the defects. It's amazing how wrongheaded [the teaching is]. There is fatal disconnectedness. You have these squirrelly people in each department who don't see the big picture.

You need to have a passionate interest in why things are happening. That cast of mind, kept over long periods, gradually improves your ability to focus on reality. If you don't have the cast of mind, you're destined for failure even if you have a high I.Q.

For years I have read the morning paper and harrumphed. There's a lot to harrumph about now.

I remember the $0.05 hamburger and a $0.40-per-hour minimum wage, so I've seen a tremendous amount of inflation in my lifetime. Did it ruin the investment climate? I think not.

The normal expectancy of the average investor - for example, the pension funds of AT&T or IBM - is 6% for a long time.

A different set of incentives from rising in an economic establishment where the rewards system, again, the reinforcement, comes from being a truffle hound. That's what Jacob Viner, the great economist called it: the truffle hound - an animal so bred and trained for one narrow purpose that he wasn't much good at anything else, and that is the reward system in a lot of academic departments.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.