In his own words
Munger, by Theme
The lines worth keeping — and, where we can, where he actually said them. Most quote pages repeat whatever’s viral; we trace each to a talk, a meeting, or the page it’s printed on, and flag the famous ones he never quite said.
Incentives 3
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”
“Perhaps the most important rule in management is, 'Get the incentives right.'”
From the FedEx night-shift example in the Misjudgment essay; wording varies slightly across editions.
Inversion 2
“Invert, always invert.”
Munger repeatedly attributed the maxim to Jacobi.
“All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.”
A favorite Munger formulation of inversion; he often presented it as a borrowed country-saying. It became the title of Peter Bevelin's 2016 book.
Learning 6
“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.”
“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.”
“You've got to have models in your head, and you've got to array your experience — both vicarious and direct — on this latticework of models.”
“You may say, 'My God, this is already getting way too tough.' But, fortunately, it isn't that tough — because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person.”
“I have a name for people who went to the extreme efficient market theory — which is 'bonkers.' It was an intellectually consistent theory that enabled them to do pretty mathematics. So I understand its seductiveness to people with large mathematical gifts. It just had a difficulty in that the fundamental assumption did not tie properly to reality.”
“I think a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time.”
Widely repeated; we could not trace it to a specific verified interview.
Temperament 4
“Envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought. Self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse. You do not want to drift into self-pity.”
“A great character and the right temperament will beat a high IQ that lacks them, almost every time.”
Captures Munger's repeated 'temperament over IQ' point, but this exact wording is a paraphrase, not a verified verbatim quote.
“Life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows. It doesn't matter. Some people recover and others don't. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something.”
“Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought. Every time you find yourself drifting into self-pity, I don't care what the cause, your child could be dying of cancer, self-pity is not going to improve the situation.”
Envy 3
“It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.”
Genuinely associated with Munger, but he often credited the observation to Warren Buffett.
“Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There's a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?”
“The world is not driven by greed. It's driven by envy.”
A shorter variant of the 'envy, not greed' idea; Munger frequently credited Buffett. Treat wording as approximate.
Avoiding stupidity 5
“It is 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.”
“It is 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. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying: 'It's the strong swimmers who drown.'”
Extended form as printed in the Almanack; the first sentence is the widely quoted core.
“There are only three ways a smart person can go broke: liquor, ladies, and leverage.”
Buffett has repeatedly credited this line to Munger; no single primary recording pins the exact occasion.
“It's very difficult to invest money well, and I think it's all but impossible to do it time after time after time in venture capital. Some of the deals get so hot, and you have to decide so quickly, that you're all just sort of gambling.”
“It is 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. People are trying to be smart — all I am trying to do is not to be idiotic, but it's harder than most people think.”
Patience 5
“If you buy a business just because it's undervalued, then you have to worry about selling it when it reaches its intrinsic value. That's hard. But if you can buy a few great companies, then you can sit on your ass. That's a good thing.”
Munger's 'sit on your ass investing' concept. The catchphrase is verifiably his (reaffirmed in his 2023 CNBC interview); this longer wording is the commonly circulated version.
“It takes character to sit there with all that cash and do nothing. I didn't get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.”
“The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting.”
Ubiquitously credited to Munger and consistent with his views, but no primary source confirms the exact words. The idea traces to Jesse Livermore ('It was always my sitting,' Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, 1923). Present as 'attributed,' not as a verified Munger original.
“I learned this trick early. They've done that experiment with the two marshmallows with the little kids... The little kids who were good at deferring the marshmallows are also the people who succeed in life. It's all deferred gratification.”
“The fact that it's so awful to grind through means that the people who want easy gratification don't come in. If it seems slow and painful to you, we kind of like it that way.”
Simplicity 3
“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
One of his most-quoted maxims; widely cited from his talks, exact occasion not pinned to a single recording.
“We have a passion for keeping things simple.”
“To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks pretty much like a nail.”
Munger's framing of why a single-discipline mind misjudges; he used it to argue for a latticework of mental models.
Costco 3
“I love everything about Costco. I'm a total addict, and I'm never going to sell a share.”
“I wish everything else in America was working as well as Costco does. Think what a blessing that would be for us all.”
“Costco does one thing right after another. They have figured out the whole damn process. It's a perfect culture, and I love everything about it.”
Crypto 3
“I think it's rat poison... So it's more expensive rat poison.”
Munger called bitcoin 'rat poison' in 2013 (BTC ~$150) and 'more expensive rat poison' by 2018. Distinct from Warren Buffett's separate 'rat poison squared' line.
“I think I should say modestly that I think the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization.”
“It's like someone else is trading turds and you decide you can't be left out.”
Partnership 3
“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie's inspiration, wisdom and participation.”
This is Buffett's tribute TO Munger, not Munger's own words. Included to document the partnership.
“If Charlie and I disagree, usually we end up by deciding not to do anything, which is fine. There are all kinds of things in this world we don't have an opinion on.”
Buffett's characterization of how he and Munger work together; documents the partnership.
“Charlie shoved me in the direction of not just buying bargains, as Ben Graham had taught me. This was the real impact he had on me. It took a powerful force to move me on from Graham's limiting views. It was the power of Charlie's mind.”
Buffett crediting Munger with moving him from 'cigar-butt' investing toward quality businesses.
Reading 2
“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.”
“My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
Widely repeated self-description; exact occasion not pinned to a single primary recording.
Circle of competence 3
“Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.”
Captures his oft-repeated stance on the limits of competence; widely cited, exact occasion not pinned to one recording.
“We have three baskets for investing: yes, no, and too tough to understand.”
Frequently quoted from the Berkshire and Wesco meetings; wording varies.
“If something is too hard, we move on to something else. What could be simpler than that?”
Opportunity 4
“The wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don't. It's just that simple.”
“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.”
“A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind that loves diagnosis involving multiple variables.”
“Capitalism should expect to get a few big winners by accident.”
Happiness 5
“The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you're going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life's results, good and bad, as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism.”
“The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want.”
“The highest form which civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust.”
“In your own life what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust. And if your proposed marriage contract has forty-seven pages, my suggestion is do not enter.”
“It's so simple to spend less than you earn, and invest shrewdly, and avoid toxic people and toxic activities, and try to keep learning all your life, and do a lot of deferred gratification because you prefer life that way. And if you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. If you don't, you're going to need a lot of luck.”