“The great defect of scale, of course, which makes the game interesting, so that the big people don’t always win—is that as you get big, you get the bureaucracy.”
Charlie Munger
Poor Charlie’s Almanack (Primary source)
In the tradition of Benjamin Franklin’s own almanack, Poor Charlie’s Almanack stands as a remarkable distillation of one man’s lifelong pursuit of what he termed elementary worldly wisdom. Compiled with evident devotion by Peter Kaufman and first published in 2005, this volume represents the most comprehensive gathering of Charles Munger’s speeches, insights, and philosophical observations spanning two decades of public discourse.
More about “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” →
“The great defect of scale, of course, which makes the game interesting, so that the big people don’t always win—is that as you get big, you get the bureaucracy. And with the bureaucracy comes the territoriality, which is again grounded in human nature. And the incentives are perverse. For example, if you worked for AT&T in my day, it was a great bureaucracy. Who in the hell was really thinking about the shareholder or anything else? And in a bureaucracy, you think the work is done when it goes out of your in-basket into somebody else’s in-basket. But, of course, it isn’t. It’s not done until AT&T delivers what it’s supposed to deliver. So you get big, fat, dumb, unmotivated bureaucracies.”
Charlie Munger
“So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“If anything, I now believe even more strongly that reliability is essential for progress in life and while quantum mechanics is unlearnable for a vast majority, reliability can be learned to great advantage by almost anyone.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“I think a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero. You’d be amazed how much Warren reads—and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
— Charlie Munger Primary sourceMore quotes by Charlie Munger →
“If I think something’s a waste of time or inappropriate I don’t wait to point it out. I say it right away. It’s real time. So you might hear me say That’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard many times during a meeting”
— Bill Gates Primary source“Work could cure almost anything.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“There isn’t always an explanation for everything.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source