Charlie Munger on Excellence Quotes

"Developing the habit of mastering the multiple models which underlie reality is the best thing you can do."

"Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts."

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

"Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom."

"Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean."

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

"We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time."

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

"We have a passion for keeping things simple."

"Living a life that is a good example to others is the highest form of excellence."

"If you skillfully follow the multidisciplinary path, you will never wish to come back."

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

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

"In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time—none, zero."

"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."

"If you don't keep learning, other people will pass you by."

"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."

"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."

"Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at."

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

"The first rule of a happy life is low expectations."

"If you want to get smart, the question you have to keep asking is 'why, why, why?'"

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

"Rationality is not just something you do so that you can make more money; it's a binding moral imperative."

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

"I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in school, which is natural."

"Extreme patience combined with extreme decisiveness."

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

"To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people."

"Being a lifelong learner is the only way to stay relevant."

"Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It's not something you do just to advance in life."

"The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward."

"Take a simple idea and take it seriously."