Charlie Munger on Business Quotes

"Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification."

"I have never seen a person who was not a reader who was also a successful person in business."

"You must have the discipline to wait for the right pitch."

"Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward."

"We insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business."

"The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want."

"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."

"I think that, every time you see the word EBITDA, you should substitute the words 'bullshit earnings'."

"The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily."

"The first rule of compounding is to never interrupt it unnecessarily. Keep the cash flowing in."

"Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world."

"The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting."

"Extreme specialization is the way to succeed most of the time."

"You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long time."

"A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments."

"If you don't get this elementary, but mildly unnatural, mathematics of elementary probability into your repertoire, then you go through a long life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest."

"We have a passion for keeping things simple."

"Simplicity has a way of improving performance through enabling us to better understand what we are doing."

"Every time you see the word 'restructuring' in a corporate report, you should substitute the word 'mistake'."

"In business, we often find that the winning system goes to a point where it eventually creates its own defeat."

"I try to get rid of people who always answer questions they don't know the answer to."

"The best thing a human being can do is help another human being know more."

"Modern investment banking is like a bunch of rats in a cage; it’s a very competitive and difficult business."

"Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant."

"Opportunity cost is a huge filter in life."

"Smart people do dumb things."

"You need to have a passionate interest in knowing why things are happening."

"You should have a circle of competence. You have to know what you understand and what you don't understand."

"Take a simple idea and take it seriously."

"The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It’s the assets you have to worry about."

"If you think you're going to be a great investor and not be a continuous learner, you're going to fail."

"Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean."

"Reliability is the first thing you want in a business partner."