Charlie Munger on Work Quotes

"Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve."

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

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

"Take a simple idea and take it seriously."

"Reliability is the most important part of being a successful person. If you're unreliable, it doesn't matter what your virtues are."

"I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in the classroom, which is natural. I can't remember when I first read Ben Franklin. I had Thomas Jefferson over my bed at seven or eight."

"Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day."

"You must have the discipline to wait for the right opportunity and then the courage to grasp it."

"Work for someone you admire and avoid someone you don't. That's a very simple rule, and it works."

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

"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."

"The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward. If you want ants to come, you put sugar on the floor."

"I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines."

"Opportunity comes to the prepared mind."

"If you want to be a great thinker, you must develop a mind that can jump the boundaries of many disciplines."

"Extreme patience combined with extreme decisiveness is the key to success."

"Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean."

"Avoid working for anyone you don't respect and admire."

"Without the method of learning, you're like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. It's just not going to work very well."

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

"Master the best that other people have ever figured out. I don't believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody's that smart."

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

"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."

"You should have a work ethic that makes you want to be as useful as you can be to the people who are paying you."

"Being a professional means you have to be reliable. You have to be someone that other people can count on."

"I think you should have a certain amount of respect for the reality that you're in. You shouldn't try to change it until you understand it."

"The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations, you’re going to be miserable all your life."

"Competency is a relative concept."

"Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it's actually you who are ruining your life. It's very simple. Realize that and you can start to fix it."

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

"I didn't get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities."

"We have a passion for keeping things simple."