A biography for Charlie Mungerhasn’t been written yet.
“Wells Fargo had a glitch - the truth of the matter is they made a business judgement that was wrong. I don't think anything is fundamentally wrong.”
“There's more honor in investment management than in investment banking.”
“You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies.”
“It is one thing to think gold has some marvelous store of value because man has no way of inventing more gold or getting it very easily, so it has the advantage of rarity. Believe me, man is capable of somehow creating more bitcoin... They tell you there are rules and they can't do it. Don't believe them.”
“Everyone has the idea of owning good companies. The problem is that they have high prices in relations to assets and earnings, and that takes all of the fun out of the game.”
“Most people don't grab the right ideas or don't know what to do with them.”
“A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it.”
“Alternatives to gold and currency and to make a big speculative vehicle - I never considered for one second having anything to do with it. I detested it the minute it had been raised.”
“That's the last thing on Earth you should think about... There's just a whole lot of things that aren't going to work for you. Figure out what they are and avoid them like the plague. And one of them is bitcoin... It is total insanity.”
“If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.”
“I've got some advice for the young: If you've got anything you really want to do, don't wait until you're 93.”
“It's a real pleasure to earn the trust of your customers slowly over time by doing what's right.”
“I'm used to people with very high IQs knowing how to recognize reality, but there's a huge human tendency where it may be instructive to think that whatever you're doing to succeed is all right.”
“There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.' At a certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.'”
“When someone takes their existing business and tries to transform it into something else - they fail. In technology that is often the case. Look at Kodak: it was the dominant imaging company in the world. They did fabulously during the great depression, but then wiped out the shareholders because of technological change.”
“I regard the bitcoin craze as totally asinine to create some manufactured currency.”
“If you're glued together right and honorable, you will succeed. Get in there and get rid of stupidities and avoid bad people. Try teaching that to your grandchildren. The best way is by example. Fix yourself.”
“Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multitasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading.”
“Who would want one's children growing up buying things like bitcoin? I hope to God my family doesn't buy it. It's noxious poison.”
“Economics profession, they've been - they've been confident in various formulas, but economics is not physics. The same formula that works in one decade doesn't work in the next. Economics is a difficult subject.”