Top 35 Charles T. Munger Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “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.”

— Charles T. Munger

Featured in: Wealth Quotes

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

— Charles T. Munger

3. “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.”

— Charles T. Munger

4. “It’s the work on your desk. Do well with what you already have and more will come in.”

— Charles T. Munger

5. “A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments. And that is why we say that having a certain kind of temperament is more important than brains. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success.”

— Charles T. Munger

6. “If something is too hard, we move on to something else. What could be simpler than that?”

— Charles T. Munger

7. “Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?”

— Charles T. Munger

8. “Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you’re trying to improve your cognition. Reality doesn’t remind you. Why not celebrate stupidities in both categories?”

— Charles T. Munger

9. “Warren talks about these discounted cash flows. I’ve never seen him do one.”

— Charles T. Munger

10. “Own your work and compound credibility.”

— Charles T. Munger

11. “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.”

— Charles T. Munger

12. “Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial One should recognize reality even when one doesn’t like it.”

— Charles T. Munger

13. “The best armour of old age is a well spent life perfecting it.”

— Charles T. Munger

14. “We both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think. So Warren and I do more reading and thinking and less doing than most people in business.”

— Charles T. Munger

15. “An example of a really responsible system is the system the Romans used when they built an arch. The guy who created the arch stood under it as the scaffolding was removed. It’s like packing your own parachute.”

— Charles T. Munger

16. “Crowd folly, the tendency of humans, under some circumstances, to resemble lemmings, explains much foolish thinking of brilliant men and much foolish behavior.”

— Charles T. Munger

17. “The great algorithm to remember in dealing with this tendency is simple: an idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it’s easily available to you.”

— Charles T. Munger

18. “The reason we avoid the word “synergy” is because people generally claim more synergistic benefits than will come. Yes, it exists, but there are so many false promises. Berkshire is full of synergies – we don’t avoid synergies, just claims of synergies.”

— Charles T. Munger

19. “All the equity investors, in total, will surely bear a performance disadvantage per annum equal to the total croupiers’ costs they have jointly elected to bear. This is an inescapable fact of life. And it is also inescapable that exactly half of the investors will get a result below the median result after the croupiers’ take, which median result may well be somewhere between unexciting and lousy.”

— Charles T. Munger

20. “If, in your thinking, you rely entirely on others – often through purchase of professional advice – whenever outside a small territory of your own, you will suffer much calamity.”

— Charles T. Munger

21. “Life, in part, is like a poker game, wherein you have to learn to quit sometimes when holding a much-loved hand.”

— Charles T. Munger

22. “Remember that just because other people agree or disagree with you doesn’t make you right or wrong – the only thing that matters is the correctness of your analysis and judgment.”

— Charles T. Munger

23. “However, both Warren and I are very good at changing our prior conclusions. We work at developing that facility because without it, disaster often comes.”

— Charles T. Munger

24. “Stay within a well-defined circle of competence.”

— Charles T. Munger

25. “Yeah, I’m passionate about wisdom. I’m passionate about accuracy and some kinds of curiosity. Perhaps I have some streak of generosity in my nature and a desire to serve values that transcend my brief life. But maybe I’m just here to show off. Who knows? I believe in the discipline of mastering 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.”

— Charles T. Munger

26. “Well, luckily I had the idea at a very early age that the safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want.”

— Charles T. Munger

27. “Above all, never fool yourself, and remember that you are the easiest person to fool.”

— Charles T. Munger

28. “The best antidote to folly from an excess of self-regard is to force yourself to be more objective when you are thinking about yourself, your family and friends, your property, and the value of your past and future activity.”

— Charles T. Munger

29. “No man’s life should be accounted a happy one until it is over.”

— Charles T. Munger

30. “I want to think about things where I have an advantage over others. I don’t want to play a game where people have an advantage over me. I don’t play in a game where other people are wise and I am stupid. I look for a game where I am wise, and they are stupid. And believe me, it works better. God bless our stupid competitors. They make us rich.”

— Charles T. Munger

31. “Charlie counts preparation, patience, discipline, and objectivity among his most fundamental guiding principles. He will not deviate from these principles, regardless of group dynamics, emotional itches, or popular wisdom that “this time around it’s different.”

— Charles T. Munger

32. “I think the tragedy in life is to be so timid you don’t play hard enough.”

— Charles T. Munger

33. “Opportunity doesn’t come often, so seize it when it does. Opportunity meeting the prepared mind – that’s the game.”

— Charles T. Munger

34. “Of taking your work very seriously, but never yourself.”

— Charles T. Munger

35. “And the models have to come from multiple disciplines – because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in their heads. So you’ve got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.”

— Charles T. Munger

36. “Resist the craving for false precision, false certainties, etc.”

— Charles T. Munger

37. “Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group... then to hell with them.”

— Charles T. Munger

38. “More important than the will to win is the will to prepare.”

— Charles T. Munger

39. “Avoid unnecessary transactional taxes and frictional costs; never take action for its own sake.”

— Charles T. Munger