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Responsibility
“But if you rise high in a corporation or elsewhere in life, you have a duty to be anexemplar – you have a duty to take less than you deserve, to set an example. This goes all the way back to Athens. ” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/wscmtg05notes.pdf
Returns:
“If I’m wrong (about future stock market returns being in the mid-single digits), it could be for a bad reason. Stocks partly sell like bonds, based on expectations of future cash streams, and partly like Rembrandts, based on the fact that they’ve gone up in the past and are fashionable,” Munger said. “If they trade more like Rembrandts in the future, then stocks will rise (at double digits), but they will have no anchors. In this case, it’s hard to predict how far, how high and how long it will last.” http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m5072/is_22_23/ai_75455080
“Well, the questioner came fromSingaporewhich has perhaps the best economic record in the history of developing an economy and therefore he referred to 15% per annum as modest. It’s not modest–it’s arrogant. Only someone fromSingaporewould call it modest. ” 1997BerkshireHathaway Annual Meeting
http://www.ticonline.com/archives_quotes.html
“Warrensaid [at the Berkshireannual meeting] that he hoped to do modestly better than the market. 15% would be a hell of a number, so the target is the 6-15% range. You’re in the same boat we are.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
“The normal expectancy of the average investor — for example, the pension funds of AT&T or IBM — is 6% for a long time.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
“The average result has to be the average result. By definition, everybody can’t beat the market. As I always say, the iron rule of life is that only 20% of the people can be in the top fifth. That’s just the way it is.” http://ycombinator.com/munger.html
Revenge:
“I don’t think vengeance is much good.” http://www.loschmanagement.com/Berkshire%20Hathaway/Charlie%20munger/The%20Psychology%20of%20Human%20Misjudgement.htm
Risk
“Using [a stock’s] volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return. Some great businesses have very volatile returns – for example, See’s [a candy company owned byBerkshire] usually loses money in two quarters of each year – and some terrible businesses can have steady results”
“I know a man named John Arriaga. After he graduated from Stanford, he started to develop properties around Stanford. There was no better time to do it then when he did. Rents have gone up and up. Normal developers would borrow and borrow. What John did was gradually pay off his debt, so when the crash came and 3 million of his 15 million square feet of buildings went vacant, he didn’t bat an eyebrow. The man deliberately took risk out of his life, and he was glad not to have leverage. There is a lot to be said that when the world is going crazy, to put yourself in a position where you take risk off the table. We might all consider imitating John.” http://news.morningstar.com/article/article.asp?id=169398
“This is an amazingly sound place. We are more disaster-resistant than most other places. We haven’t pushed it as hard as other people would have pushed it. I don’t want to go back to Go. I’ve been to Go. A lot of our shareholders have a majority of their net worth in Berkshire, and they don’t want to go back to Go either.” http://www.fool.com/news/foth/2001/foth010508.htm
Role Model:
“Early Charlie Munger is a horrible career model for the young because not enough was delivered to civilization in return for what was wrested from capitalism. And other similar career models are even worse.” http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:mgSaxC3O1IoJ:www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazines/1999/march/munger.html+Berkshire+Hathaway%27s+vice+chairman+shreds+the+conventional+wisdom+on+foundation+investing&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
“I feel that by getting rich in the way I did, I think my own example has hurt my own country.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/wscmtg05notes.pdf
“Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. “They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate.” http://www.law.harvard.edu/alumni/bulletin/2001/summer/feature_1-1.html
“Whoever makes you smarter a little earlier in life makes you better,” http://seekingalpha.com/article/14114
Sales
“…If you take sales presentations and brokers of commercial real estate and businesses… I’m 70 years old, I’ve never seen one I thought was even within hailing distance of objective truth…. ‘incentive-caused bias,’ causes this terrible abuse. And many of the people who are doing it you would be glad to have married into your family compared to what you’re otherwise going to get….” http://www.loschmanagement.com/Berkshire%20Hathaway/Charlie%20munger/The%20Psychology%20of%20Human%20Misjudgement.htm
SEC:
“The SEC does way more good than harm – the last thing I would do is get rid of the SEC…if accounting were thoroughly fixed, a lot of other sins would go away. We’re paying a huge price for deterioration of accounting.” http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2006/06/26/the-wit-and-wisdom-of-charlie-munger/
See’s Candy:
“See’s candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought,” http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/1996/10/21/newscolumn6.html If
See’s Candy had asked $100,000 more [in the purchase price; Buffett chimed in, “$10,000 more”], Warrenand I would have walked — that’s how dumb we were. Ira Marshall said you guys are crazy — there are some things you should pay up for, like quality businesses and people. You are underestimating quality. We listened to the criticism and changed our mind. This is a good lesson for anyone: the ability to take criticism constructively and learn from it. If you take the indirect lessons we learned from See’s, you could say Berkshirewas built on constructive criticism. Now we don’t want any more today. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
“It takes almost no capital to open a new See’s candy store. We’re drowning in capital of our own that has almost no cost. It would be crazy to franchise stores like some capital-starved pancake house. We like owning our own stores as a matter of quality control.” http://www.tilsonfunds.com/
Science
“It’s very useful to have a good grasp of all the big ideas in hard and soft science. A, it gives perspective. B, it gives a way for you to organize and file away experience in your head, so to speak.”
