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January 26 - May 19, 2025
lifelong learning, intellectual curiosity, sobriety, avoidance of envy and resentment, reliability, learning from the mistakes of others, perseverance, objectivity, willingness to test one’s own beliefs, and many more.
he knows that repetition is the heart of instruction.
to concentrate on the task immediately in front of him and to control spending.
Charlie has made himself into a grandmaster of preparation, patience, discipline, and objectivity.
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
Charlie counts preparation, patience, discipline, and objectivity among his most fundamental guiding principles.
“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there”
“a great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.”
While poor outcomes are excusable in the Munger–Buffett world—given the fact that some outcomes are outside of their control—sloppy preparation and decision-making are never excusable because they are controllable.
What makes a great business model for Charlie? His recommended reading materials provide some guidance. Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Selfish Gene, Ice Age, and Darwin’s Blind Spot all have a certain theme: a focus on the issue of competitive destruction and an examination of why some entities are nevertheless able to adapt, survive, and even dominate over time.
Preparation. Discipline. Patience. Decisiveness.
“If I have seen a little farther than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” The bones of that man lie buried now, in Westminster
“I wish I knew where I was going to die, and then I’d never go there.”
Einstein said that his successful theories came from “curiosity, concentration, perseverance, and self-criticism.”
Braun Company’s communications was called the five Ws: You had to tell who was going to do what, where, when, and why.
Just as animals flourish in niches, people who specialize in the business world—and get very good because they specialize—frequently find good economics that they wouldn’t get any other way.
You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.
But when you analyze what happened, the big money’s been made in the high quality businesses.
Demosthenes said, “What a man wishes, that also will he believe.”
Why should we want to play a competitive game in a field where we have no advantage—maybe a disadvantage—instead of in a field where we have a clear advantage?
I don’t want you to think we have any way of learning or behaving so you won’t make a lot of mistakes. I’m just saying that you can learn to make fewer mistakes than other people—and how to fix your mistakes faster when you do make them. But there’s no way that you can live an adequate life without making many mistakes.
I like figuring things out and making bets. So I simply did what came naturally.
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.
you’ve got to know what you know and what you don’t know. What could possibly be more useful in life than that?
“Jack, what did Apple do wrong?” His answer? “I don’t have any special competence that would enable me to answer that question.”
He failed to recognize that what works best in most cases is to appeal to a man’s interest.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no more simple.”
I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out.
great algebraist Carl Jacobi so often said, “Invert, always invert,” and why the Pythagoreans51 thought in reverse to prove that the square root of two was an irrational number.
Einstein’s injunction that “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no more simple.”
“Hic depositum est, quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni”—“Here lies that which was mortal of Isaac Newton.”
“The company that needs a new machine tool and hasn’t bought it is already paying for it.”
“What a man wishes, he will believe.”
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool.”
“The man who needs a new machine tool and hasn’t bought it is already paying for it.”
“If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.”
“It’s not bringing in the new ideas that’s so hard. It’s getting rid of the old ones.”
“Where there is no bread, there is no law; where there is no law, there is no bread.”
You should often appeal to interest, not to reason, even when your motives are lofty.
“Of what use is a philosopher who never offends anybody?”
“A man never forgets where he has buried the hatchet.”
have heard him wisely say on several occasions, “It is not greed that drives the world but envy.”
“What a man wishes, that also will he believe.”
