Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway, died at 99 on Tuesday — but he left a trove of salty wit and wisdom for investors to feast upon for years to come.
The former Harvard-trained lawyer-turned-moneyman was revered on Wall Street for his vast knowledge and patient, buy-and-hold approach — and he didn’t suffer fools gladly. Targets of Munger’s scorn included cryptocurrencies, which he likened to a “venereal disease”. He also voiced deep regrets about technology’s devastation of the media industry — especially newspapers.
The nonegenarian — whose net worth was estimated by Forbes at $2.2 billion upon his death — shared his sentiments during Berkshire’s lively annual meetings, known as “Woodstock for capitalists,” even as Buffett ate McDonald’s burgers, drank Cherry Cokes and strummed the ukelele.
Buffett praised his vice chairman in Berkshire’s 2014 annual report for his “wide-ranging brilliance, prodigious memory and…firm opinions.” The latter were wide-ranging, with a sampling below that helps illustrate what made him such a colossal figure the investing world:
“You’ll do better if you have passion for something in which you have aptitude. If Warren Buffett had gone into ballet, no one would have heard of him.” –2008 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“So far, I’ve had plenty of decline, but I’m pretty shrewd about the way I handle it. And so far the results have not been that bad in my old age. Now, my sex life would be a different subject.” –2023 Daily Journal annual meeting
“The first rule of a happy life is low expectations.” –2021 Daily Journal annual meeting
“I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they got up and boy does that help—particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.” – 2007 USC Law School Commencement Address
“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.” –Poor Charlie’s Almanack, published 2005
“Don’t do cocaine. Don’t race trains to the track. And avoid all AIDS situations.” -2004 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“You particularly want to avoid evil or seriously irrational people, particularly if they are attractive members of the opposite sex. That can lead to a lot of trouble.” —2004 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“What you don’t want to be is like the man who, when they had his funeral, the minister said ‘now’s the time for someone to say something nice about the deceased.’ And came forward. And finally one man came up and said, ‘Well, his brother was worse.’” –2017 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“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.” —1997 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“I step out of my bed these days and then sit down in my wheelchair. So I am paying some price for old age. But I prefer it to being dead. And whenever I feel sad about being in a wheelchair, I think well you know, Roosevelt ran the whole damn country for 12 years in a wheelchair. So I’m just trying to make this wheelchair thing last as long as Roosevelt did.” –2023 Daily Journal annual meeting
“If I can be optimistic when I’m nearly dead, surely the rest of you can handle a little inflation.” –-2010 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“A man who jumps out of a building is OK until he hits the ground.” – 2023 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“I think that, every time you see the word EBITDA, you should substitute the words ‘bulls–t earnings.'” –2003 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
On bad mergers: “When you mix raisins and turds, you’ve still got turds.” —2000 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“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.” –2020 Daily Journal annual meeting
“Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices.” –Berkshire Hathaway’s 2014 annual report
“Identify the main stupidities that do bright people in and then organize your patterns for thinking and developments, so you don’t stumble into those stupidities.” —2010 panel at Harvard University
“Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.” —Poor Charlie’s Almanack
“The world is full of foolish gamblers and they will not do as well as the patient investors.” —2018 Weekly in Stocks interview
“A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success.” – Kiplinger interview, 2005
“It’s so simple. You spend less than you earn. Invest shrewdly, and avoid toxic people and toxic activities, and try and keep learning all your life, etcetera etcetera. And do a lot of deferred gratification because you prefer life that way. And if you do all those things you are almost certain to succeed. And if you don’t, you’re gonna need a lot of luck.” —Poor Charlie’s Almanack
“I’m proud of the fact that I avoided it. It’s like some venereal disease or something.” —2023 Daily Journal annual meeting
“A cryptocurrency is not a currency, not a commodity, and not a security. Instead, it’s a gambling contract with a nearly 100% edge for the house, entered into in a country where gambling contracts are traditionally regulated only by states that compete in laxity.” —Wall Street Journal op-ed, published 2023
“Sometimes I call it crypto ‘crappo,’ sometimes I call it ‘crypto s–t.’ It’s just ridiculous that anybody would buy this stuff.” —2023 CNBC interview
“I think anybody that sells this stuff is either delusional or evil. I won’t touch the crypto. I’m not interested in undermining the national currencies of the world.” —2022 Australian Financial Review interview
“To me, it’s just dementia. It’s like somebody else is trading turds and you decide you can’t be left out.” —2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“I haven’t the faintest idea how Elon Musk will turn out, but he has a considerable chance of success and considerable chance of failure. He seems to like it that way.” —2019 Daily Journal annual meeting
“How many people of our age quickly mastered Google? I’ve been to Google headquarters. It looked to me like a kindergarten.” —2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“I am personally skeptical of some of the hype that has gone into artificial intelligence. I think old-fashioned intelligence works pretty well.” —2023 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“We have computers with algorithms trading against other computers. We’ve got people who know nothing about stocks, being advised by stockbrokers who know even less.” – Berkshire Hathaway 2022 meeting
“The electric vehicle is coming big time, and that’s a very interesting development. At the moment, it’s imposing huge capital costs and huge risks, and I don’t like huge capital costs and huge risks..” –2023 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
“We are going to miss these newspapers terribly. Each newspaper… was an independent bastion of power. The economic position was so impregnable … and the ethos of a journalist was to try to tell it like it is. And they really were a branch of the government — they called them the Fourth Estate, meaning the fourth branch of the government. It arose by accident. Now about 95% of [newspapers are] going to disappear and go away forever. And what do we get in substitute? We get a bunch of people who attract an audience because they’re crazy ….
I have my favorite crazies, and you have your favorite crazies, and we get together and all become crazier as we hire people to tell us what we want to hear. This is no substitute for Walter Cronkite and all those great newspapers of yesteryear. We have suffered a huge loss here. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s the creative destruction of capitalism, but it’s a terrible thing that’s happened to our country.” — 2022 Daily Journal annual meeting