Charlie Munger Quotes

Accounting for the most part, remains a legalistic and traditional practice, almost immune to self-criticism by scientific methods.

You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.

The reaction of weak management to weak operations is often weak accounting.

I was never a Certified Public Accountant... I just had a degree in accounting. The reason I was never a Certified Public Accountant was because it would require passing a test, which I would not have been able to do.

I always assign auditors to strictly supervise the businesses.

A board of directors that cannot produce reliable audited financial statements for almost seven years simply should not remain in office.

Virtually all Federal accounting is still oriented toward preventing fraud and theft, not toward controlling costs.

If you talk to a top accountant about his field of expertise, it's mind-boggling.

Maybe it wasn't anything remotely to do with religion, mysticism or metaphilosophy after all; maybe it was more banal; maybe it was just...accounting.

I have to say accounting almost killed me.

Accounting is the language of business.

A lot of people think if you just had more process and more compliance -- checks and doublechecks and so forth -- you could create a better result in the world. Well, Berkshire has had practically no process. We had hardly any internal auditing until they forced it on us. We just try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust and be careful whom we trust.

I've turned down songs that would be much easier to play on the radio that I don't think should be on the album. Maybe I've shot myself in the foot.

When you think about [Truman] Capote in the - was what he did exploitative of a person's life or exploitative of these murders? You look at our culture now, you look at celebrity and how it plays out in our culture now, and Capote was one of the great PR men of his time.

You have to watch out with my plays. They're like yeast. You think they're one thing, then all of a sudden subtext gets to working.

It is well known that you can only manage what you measure, and as this is the job of professional accountants, it means they have huge influence on companies' governance.

Case (Keenum) is going to be the quarterback. We’re going to give him a chance to see how he can perform. I think the jury is still out. He’s got a lot of ability. He’s shown some flashes of brilliance and then he’s shown some rookie mistakes. We’ve got to see if we can improve, eliminate those mistakes, minimize those mistakes and continue some of the outstanding play that (we’ve) seen and see whether we think that he can be a starting quarterback in the NFL. At this point, we really don’t know.

A couple of times, I could have turned a trick. But I didn't want to start. I knew how it would play. When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

I made my first mix tape when I was 14. I used to play basketball and ride bikes, but I think I just latched onto music because I figured I could be really good at it on my own.

What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.

It's something you have to find from within. You have to keep pushing yourself from within. It's not about what other people think and what other people say. It's about what you want to accomplish and do you want to go out there and be prepared to beat everyone you play or face.

I love motion capture. I think it's the best thing, ever. It's wonderful. It gives you an incredible freedom to just play things out.

I'm too young to play lawyers. But I've been really lucky because I never got labeled. I never did the John Hughes thing. I did adult movies. I'm not bragging or anything, but I think that I've chosen really good roles. I've played different people and showed that I have a little bit of range.

There's no doubt about it. Arcadia is Tom Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and, new for him, emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow.

I think the play offers (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans For instance, in 'Fences' they see a garbageman, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman's life is affected by the same things- love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives.