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Over the years, Munger hasn't been shy to share his opinions on business, politics, and success, and his insight hasn't gotten any less sharp with age. We compiled 19 of the businessman's greatest quotes that anyone can learn from.
Here are 18 of Charlie Munger's most brilliant quotes:
"Not everybody can learn everything. No matter how hard you try, there is always some guy or girl who achieves more. My attitude is, so what? Does any of us need to be at the very top of the whole world? It’s ridiculous."
"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."
"I don't have a single achievement I'm all that proud of. I set out to have more common sense than most, and I'm pleased I did as well as I did. If I had to do it all over again, I think it'd be a lot harder."
"There's a tendency to think that our present politicians are much worse than any we had in the past. But we tend to forget how awful our politicians were in the past."
"Don't drift into self-pity because it doesn't solve any problems. Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge and self-pity are disastrous modes of thoughts."
"An idiot can diversify a portfolio, or a computer. But the whole trick of the game is to have a few times when you know something is better than average, and invest only where you have that extra knowledge. If that gets you a few opportunities, that’s enough."
"Don't expect too much of human nature. I have a rule for politicians — it's a stoic rule. I always reflect that they are never so bad you don’t live to want them back. You laugh, you young people, but you're going to live to wish Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump were immortal."
"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 emotion 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."
"I think that people who are professional traders that go into trading cryptocurrencies, it’s just disgusting. It's like somebody else is trading turds and you decide I can't be left out."
'Of course when people talk about common sense, they mean uncommon sense. Every time you hear that someone has common sense, it means that he has uncommon sense, and it’s much harder to have common sense than is generally thought.'
"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."
"If you're going to live a long time, you have to keep learning — what you formerly knew is never enough. So if you don't learn to constantly revise your earlier conclusions, and get better ones, you are — I always use the same metaphor — you're like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest."
