Charlie Munger Quotes

Since the Earth is finite, and we will have to stop expanding sometime, should we do it before or after nature's diversity is gone?

Our culture does not teach us this, but what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. If you cheat in Vegas, it comes right home with you. If you cheat in Vegas, you walk home as a cheater. You lie awake at a night a cheater. You cannot escape it.

We live on a finite planet. We have finite resources, and we're running out of good, arable land.

I do not believe you can have infinite population or economic growth in a finite world. We are living on the shoulders of some awesome geometric curves.

Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.

The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.

I think the Greens are posing some of the most important questions of our time, for example how we live sustainably on a planet of finite resources and a rising population, and how do we do that in a way that doesn't exceed environmental limits and which is fair.

People think that the ocean is big enough to sustain anything we throw at it - its hard to get into your head that it's actually finite.

As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed.

We cheated, you and me, and someone noticed. I noticed you; someone else noticed me. It hurts us. That's not so bad. So many people cheat. Everywhere on every level. Everyone's cheated. I'm just saying that you don't need to see yourself as a cheater. Because that's not who you are. You're someone who cheated. There's a difference, and you should try to get that difference, or that's who you'll grow up to be.

In other words, I’m against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.

Cheats prosper until there are enough who bear grudges against them to make sure they do not prosper.

For too long we have been taking, and the Earth has been giving. But that free-for-all, that all-you-can-eat buffet, it's over. The salad bar is closed.

Sometimes I'm under the impression some of the fights happen that they shouldn't happen because a guy's cheating. Also, I think when something like this happen they should have not only a suspension but also monetary wise enforce a penalty. Maybe take the purse of the fighter to the other fighter.

Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics. To us a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence: to us, an episode; to them, a catastrophe, a threat to the world.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, you couldn't say you were better than the other person because you knew you had a secret. You knew you had cheated.

There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.

Justice is inseparable from truth in human life.

Politically it would be terribly repressive to prevent people from having as many children as they want. But something's got to prevent it; and it won't be pleasant... We're still behaving in ways that have become disastrous... I don't think this helps us to survive... We're very species-centric... and now exist at the expense of every other form of life on Earth.

To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society.

To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

If you cheat on your wife, you'll cheat on your business partner.

The Democrats say the rich are rich because they stole all of their money or somehow fleeced the poor for all of their money. "If it weren't for these cheating, skunk, lying, rich people, you poor people would have the money! You remember when you had this, right? You remember when you had that house on the beach and your Rolls-Royce, and then one day some rich guy came over and stole it all from you? You remember that? So you want to vote for Obama and the Democrats to get your house back and your Rolls-Royce 'cause you remember when Koch brothers came and took it from you."

I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.

The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.