In a recent interview, Charlie Munger was asked if he is concerned about rising inflation.
He was quoted as saying: “inflation can be a very serious subject — it can be the way democracies die,” stunning listeners. Further, he noted the Roman empire inflated currency for hundreds of years; eventually, the empire collapsed.
The 98-year-old vice-chairman is the lesser known public face of the iconic Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B), second to Warren Buffett.
We’ve gathered a list of notable quips and quotes from the famed investor ranging by topic:
On Cryptocurrency:
- “I certainly didn’t invest in crypto. I’m proud of the fact I’ve avoided it. It’s like a venereal disease or something. I just regard it as beneath contempt.”
- “We’ve got a digital currency already, it’s called a bank account.”
- “I admire the Chinese for banning it. I think they were right and we were wrong to allow it.”
On Investing:
- “I have a friend who’s a fisherman, he says, ‘I have a simple rule for success in fishing. Fish where the fish are.’ You want to fish where the bargains are. That simple. If the fishing is really lousy where you are you should probably look for another place to fish.”
- “It takes character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing. I didn’t get to be where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.”
- “Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.”
On Life:
- “I think life is a whole series of opportunity costs. You know, you got to marry the best person who is convenient to find who will have you. Investment is much the same sort of a process.”
- “You don’t have a lot of envy, you don’t have a lot of resentment, you don’t overspend your income, you stay cheerful in spite of your troubles, you deal with reliable people and you do what you’re supposed to do. All these simple rules work so well to make your life better.”
On Learning And Decision-Making
- “We’ve had enough good sense when something is working very well to keep doing it. I’d say we’re demonstrating what might be called the fundamental algorithm of life — repeat what works.”
- “What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience — both vicarious and direct — on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and fail in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.”
