Poor Charlie's Almanack Quotes

“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?”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“However, all man's desired geometric progressions, if a high rate of growth is chosen, at last come to grief on a finite earth.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“In the last analysis, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“don't believe that psychology professors in America are people whose alternative career paths were in the toughest part of physics. And that may be one of the reasons why they don't get it quite right.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time-none, zero.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“Just avoid things like AIDS situations, racing trains to the crossing, and doing cocaine.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“You'll better understand the evil of top audit firms starting to sell fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you that one told me that they're better [than the others] because they only sold [the schemes] to their top twenty clients, so no one would notice.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“When I was younger, the major accounting firms were quite ethical places, and nobody got filthy rich. But in the space of twenty-five years, they sold out to terrible behavior, one little step at a time.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“[It's] a funny business because on a net basis, the whole investment management business together gives no value added to all buyers combined. That's the way it has to work.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“There is no better teacher than history in determining the future.... There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“In investing, just as in baseball, to put runs on the scoreboard, one must watch the playing field, not the scoreboard.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“Still, the special strength of extra-vivid images in influencing the mind can be constructively used (1) in persuading someone else to reach a correct conclusion or (2) as a device for improving one's own memory by attaching vivid images, one after the other, to many items one doesn't want to forget. Indeed, such use of vivid images as memory boosters is what enabled the great orators of classical Greece and Rome to give such long, organized speeches without using notes.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember your lies.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“I notice that when all a man’s information is confined to the field in which he is working, the work is never as good as it ought to be. A man has to get perspective, and he can get it from bools or from people-preferably from both.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“work providing much more value to others.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“That sounds funny, making friends among 'the eminent dead,' but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better for you in life and work better in education. It's way better than just giving the basic concepts.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“You don't need to take the last dollar" and "Choose clients as you would choose friends.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“understood and respected the value of one's word.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“I would have to say that Charlie is not looking for anyone to have an effect on him, but that Nancy has done a remarkable job in spite of that fact.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition

“Charlie marches to his own music, and it's music like virtually no one else is listening to.”
― Peter D. Kaufman, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition