Charlie Munger Quotes

Some men rob you with a six-gun -- others rob you with a fountain pen.

Debts and lies are generally mixed together.

Governor [Myron] Herrick is not a bad man; he is simply weak. He is one of those men who can do dishonest things honestly.

Managers that always promise to 'make the numbers' will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.

Once you tell your first lie, the first time you lie for him, you are in it with him, and then you are lost.

Over the years, Charlie and I have seen all sorts of bad corporate behavior, both accounting and operational, induced by the desire of management to meet Wall Street expectations. What starts as an ‘innocent’ fudge in order to not disappoint ‘the Street’ … can become the first step toward full-fledged fraud. Playing with the numbers ‘just this once’ may well be the CEO’s intent; it’s seldom the end result. And if it’s okay for the boss to cheat a little, it’s easy for subordinates to rationalize similar behavior.

No public man can be just a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's land between honesty and dishonesty.

Leaders must understand that some people will inevitably sell out to the evil side. Don't waste your time wondering why; spend your time discovering who.

Tis gold Which buys admittance--oft it doth--yea, and makes Diana's rangers false themselves, yield up This deer to th' stand o' th' stealer: and 'tis gold Which makes the true man kill'd and saves the thief, Nay, sometimes hangs both thief and true man.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

Nature doesn't cheat - people do.

If you can create even the illusion of high profitability for a few years, then when the thing collapses you can walk out of the wreckage a very rich man.

The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.

Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.

In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.

The legal tender quality [of money] is only valuable for the purposes of dishonesty.

Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards.

I think in some cases, a penny is nothing compared to the kind of numbers. Then you get to fraud, waste and abuse, Sean. I mean, the fraud and the waste and the abuse, which everybody agrees if you can solve that problem, but it's, you know, mind-boggling the kind of numbers.

The truth now.He was disappointed in human beings.He had seen too many betrayals,too many pitiful weaknesses,too much greed for money and fame.The falseness between lovers,husbands and wifes,fathers,sons,mothers,daughters

I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton

The world has always been betrayed by decent men with bad ideals.

Cheating gets easier every time it's done. It's only hard the first time, when one feels the sting of morality and the guilt of betraying someone's trust.

I want to say something, and it may sound harsh, not to you, but to the American people. In a sense, in my view, the business model of Wall Street is fraud. It's fraud. I believe that corruption is rampant, and the fact that major bank after major bank has reached multi billion dollar settlements with the United States government when we have a weak regulator system tells me that not only did we have to bail them out once, if we don't start breaking them up, we're going to have to bail them out again, and I do not want to see that happen.

The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves for the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.