Charlie

I've written on several occasions about the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.  Most associate it with Warren Buffett, but it also stars his vice-chairman, Charlie Munger.  Both are very smart and witty, but Munger has a slightly more acerbic style.

Last week someone forwarded an article to me with 29 of Munger's most interesting quotes.  They are the kind of things he says at the Berky meeting all of the time.  The guy is awesome.  I'm just going to throw out a few of best ones (in my opinion), and this is just a short sample:

"The right way to make decisions in practical life is based on your opportunity cost. When you get married, you have to choose the best [spouse] you can find that will have you. The rest of life is the same damn way."

"What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you’re unreliable it doesn’t matter what your virtues are. You're going to crater immediately. Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability."

"Some people are extraordinarily good at knowing the limits of their knowledge, because they have to be. Think of somebody who’s been a professional tightrope walker for 20 years – and has survived. He couldn’t survive as a tightrope walker for 20 years unless he knows exactly what he knows and what he doesn’t know.  He’s worked so hard at it, because he knows if he gets it wrong he won’t survive. The survivors know. ... Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant."

"Another thing that does one in, of course, is the self-serving bias to which we’re all subject. You think the 'True Little Me' is entitled to do what it wants to do. And, for instance, why shouldn’t the True Little Me overspend my income. There once was a man who became the most famous composer in the world but was utterly miserable most of the time, and one of the reasons was because he always overspent his income. That was Mozart. If Mozart can’t get by with this kind of asinine conduct, I don’t think you should try."

"The highest form that civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust — not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another. ... In your own life what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust. And if your proposed marriage contract has forty-seven pages, I suggest you not enter."

"Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. It’s not something you do just to advance in life. Wisdom acquisition is a moral duty. As a corollary to that proposition which is very important, it means that you are hooked for lifetime learning. And without lifetime learning, you people are not going to do very well. You are not going to get very far in life based on what you already know."