Charlie Munger Quotes

We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognize that we don't.

How easy it is to think well of ourselves. Until the moment is upon us, we can never be certain.

A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessments of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.

The longer I live, the more I realize that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time!

Objective leaders identify their unproductive mental models and tweak them for greater effectiveness.

Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.

Self-complacency is the companion of ignorance.

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes and not having all the answers, so long as we are willing to admit this and strive for personal betterment. Those who think they know it all have no way of finding out that they don't.

The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be.

Thinking you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone

I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it.

We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don't think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we're forever condemned to be irrational.

I think the problem with people like this is that they are so stupid that they have no idea how stupid they are.

Every step that I've taken was a learning lesson. Even to not think you're so big and so bad you can't fall.

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

Many person might have achieved wisdom had they not supposed that they already possessed it.

The minute you feel you have given a faultless performance is the time to get out.

People assign much higher probability to the truth of their opinions than is warranted.

We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.

When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong.

If you think everything you've done is great, you're probably dumb.

To conceal ignorance is to increase it. An honest confession of it, however, gives ground for the hope that it will diminish some day or the other.

When you think you know it all, there's not much that you'll learn.

The greatest fool is he who thinks he is not one and all others are.

You know, many a man realizes late in life that if when he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he might be what he won't; but how few boys stop to think that if they knew what they don't know instead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be?