Charlie Munger on Planning Quotes

"You have to have the courage of your convictions and the discipline to follow your plan when things look bleak."

"Opportunities come to the prepared mind. If you're not ready, you'll miss the fat pitch."

"A plan that requires perfection is a bad plan because you're never going to get it."

"We have a passion for keeping things simple."

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

"Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it's time."

"You should have a checklist before you make a decision."

"We don't have a master plan. We just try to be rational."

"We recognized early on that very smart people do very dumb things, and we wanted to know why and who, so we could avoid them."

"You need to have a passionate interest in why things are happening. That way of thinking, held over long periods, gradually improves your ability to focus on reality."

"We have three baskets for investing: yes, no, and too hard to understand."

"Being rational is a moral duty. You should never be stupider than you have to be."

"You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don't, you're going to lose."

"We don’t want to be the smartest, we want to be the ones who are consistently not stupid."

"The game of life is the game of perpetual learning. At least it is if you want to win."

"You need to know the big ideas in the big disciplines and use them routinely—all of them, not just a few."

"The best source of a plan is a well-developed set of mental models in your head."

"We're emphasizing the prevention of mistakes."

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

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

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

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

"We have a system that works because we try to avoid the stupid things, rather than trying to be very intelligent."

"The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward. If you want a specific outcome, you must plan the incentives correctly."

"We try to stay within our circle of competence. That is the most important part of our plan."

"I don't think you can get to be a really good investor without doing a massive amount of reading."

"It’s waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can’t stand to wait."

"Most people are too hurried, too stressed. We have a system that works because we avoid the crowd."

"I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out."

"Reliability is the first thing you want in a plan. If you're not reliable, it doesn't matter how high your IQ is."

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

"You must have a model in your head. And you must array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this lattice of models."

"Take a simple idea and take it seriously."