Munger quotes

My favorite quotes from http://www.valuewalk.com/charlie-munger-page/

CHARLIE MUNGER QUOTES

1. You must value the business in order to value the stock.
2. The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.
3. Experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime. A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind that loves diagnosis involving multiple variables. Then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available because of prudence and patience in the past.
4.  Just as animals flourish in niches, people who specialize in some narrow niche can do very well.
5. The number one idea is to view a stock as an ownership of the business and to judge the staying quality of the business in terms of its competitive advantage. Look for more value in terms of discounted future cash flow than you are paying for. Move only when you have an advantage.
6. Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company’s owners are slim at best.
7. It is not given to human beings to have such talent that they can just know everything about everything all the time. However, it is given to human beings who work hard at it. Who look and sift the world for a mispriced bet – that they can occasionally find one.
8. In addition, the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time they don’t. It is just that simple.
9. Acknowledging what you do not know is the dawning of wisdom.
10. Determine value apart from price; progress apart from activity; wealth apart from size.
11. Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets – and can be lost in a heartbeat.
12. I think records of accomplishment are very important. If you start early trying to have a perfect one in some simple thing like honesty, you are well on your way to success in this world.
13. We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.
14. Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.
15. Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Systematically you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. Nevertheless, you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve.
16. Over the long term, it’s hard for a stock to earn a much better return that the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns six percent on capital over forty years and you hold it for that forty years, you are not going to make much different than a six percent return – even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns eighteen percent on capital over twenty or thirty years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you will end up with one hell of a result.
17. You must have the confidence to override people with more credentials than you whose cognition is impaired by incentive-caused bias or some similar psychological force that is obviously present. Nevertheless, there are also cases where you have to recognize that you have no wisdom to add – and that your best course is to trust some expert.
18. The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It is such a simple idea. It is the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.
19. I am not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I have reached that state.
20. Avoid working directly under somebody you do not admire and don’t want to be like.
21. Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you are really going to excel in it.
22. Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.
23. Everybody engaged in complex work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in
24. Good businesses are ethical businesses. A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail.