Munger on Character

“Three rules for a career: Don't sell anything you wouldn't buy yourself; don't work for anyone you don't respect and admire; and work only with people you enjoy.”

A genuine Munger sentiment; this tidy three-rule phrasing is a compiler's rendering, not a verbatim transcript line.

“I think track records are very important. If you start early trying to have a perfect one in some simple thing like honesty, you're well on your way to success in this world.”

“It isn't an easy thing to work very hard for many years to build up a significant career, as I had done, and then to destroy that career on purpose.”

“It's one of the advantages of being very rich: you can behave better than other people.”

In context, about the freedom independence gives to act with integrity — not a boast.

“Warren and I both know some very successful businessmen who have not one true friend on earth — and rightly so.”

He went on: 'And that is no way to live a life.'

“You want to live your life so some people will actually miss you when you're gone.”

“If you want to improve your grandchildren, the best way is to improve yourself.”

“First, be unreliable. Do not faithfully do what you have engaged to do. If you will only master this one habit you will more than counterbalance the combined effect of all your virtues, howsoever great.”

The first of his ironic 'how to guarantee misery' prescriptions — the real counsel is the inverse (be reliable).

“I'm a puritan. I always want to suffer now to make the future better, because I think that's the way grown-ups should behave.”

Said while arguing to conserve U.S. hydrocarbon reserves.

“If you want to carry one message from Charlie Munger it's this: if it's trite it's right. All those old virtues, they all work.”

“How nice it is to have a tyrant's strength, and how wrong it is to use it like a tyrant.”

From his 2011 Wesco-merger remarks; note-taker-dependent wording (one source reads 'but how wrong').

“If all you succeed in doing in your life is to get early rich from passive holding of little bits of paper, and you get better and better at only that for all your life, it's a failed life. Life is more than being shrewd at passive wealth accumulation.”

“I have a friend who says, 'The young man knows the rules and the old man knows the exceptions.'”

He credits the line to an unnamed friend.

“It's a big mistake to pretend to be practically anything, because you become what you pretend to be. I knew a couple of no-good Nicks in my youth who became leading philanthropists. They did it just to mislead people, but after they'd done it for a while, they became legitimate philanthropists. It always gave me the conclusion that hypocrisy really is better than most people think.”

Transcripts differ on 'no-good Nicks' vs 'no-goodniks.'

“If the high road is way more profitable, do you deserve a lot of credit for choosing it? People who get the credit are the people that take it even when it's painful.”

“There are certain virtues that are common in all of Berkshire's subsidiaries. We don't create them — we select companies that have them already. We just don't screw it up.”

From Whitney Tilson's contemporaneous notes (faithful, not court-reporter-exact).

“You particularly want to avoid working directly under somebody you don't admire and don't want to be like. It's dangerous. We're all subject to control to some extent by authority figures, particularly authority figures who are rewarding us.”

“It was never easy. It's thoroughly understood it was never easy, and it's harder now. But it takes time. And you pay attention that you're handling the people you deal with. You want a good reputation when you're all done, not a bad one.”

“Reputation is very helpful in financial life, and to destroy your reputation by associating with scum balls and scum ball promotions, it's a huge mistake.”

On reputable firms backing FTX.

“There's no more guaranteed way to make people hate you than to fail them in their reasonable expectations. So, of course, you want to live a life where, by and large, you're meeting the reasonable expectations of other people. That's what civilization requires of all of us.”

“If you make yourself a very reliable person and stay reliable all your life, faithfully doing whatever you engage to do, it will be very hard for you to fail at anything you want.”

The sincere counterpart to his ironic 'first, be unreliable' misery prescription.

“They take it like men, and they aren't bitching and wailing and they don't act like victims.”

On the Japanese people's stoicism through decades of stagnation.

“The proper antidote to creating Persian Messenger Syndrome and its bad effects is to develop, through exercise of will, a habit of welcoming bad news.”

His antidote to 'Persian Messenger Syndrome' — punishing the bearer of bad news.

“Perhaps this 'eyes-half-shut' solution is about right, but I favor a tougher prescription: 'See it like it is and love anyway.'”

His tougher answer to Franklin's 'eyes wide open before marriage, half shut thereafter.'

“I have a fundamental theory that in some way the world is just, and if you do something immoral or stupid there will likely be a whirlwind someday where you get clobbered.”

From Peter Boodell's notes (recollections, corroborated elsewhere).