Charlie Munger

Easiest way to get what you want is to deliver what you want. Getting deserved trust. Deliver what you want to buy.

There's no love that so right as admiration based love. Don't be in a diseased based love as in Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage.

Aquisition of wisdom is a duty. You must be a learning machine. Go to bed wiser than in the morning.

Alfred North Whitehead referred to rapid growth in civilisation due to invention. Only when you learn the method of learning can you progress. Half the time Warren Buffet spends reading and the other half talking with very talented individuals whom he trusts.

Values like the pathologist on bone tumour who took a sabbatical to work on his book 17 hours a day for a year to publish his 2000 copies of his book in all the cancer centres in the world.

Multi-disciplinary approach

Learn all the big ideas in all the big disciplines. Went through life practising this multi disciplinary approach, but keep your light under your bushel so that you don't cause offence to those who does know a lot but less than you. Cicero is famous for saying that the man who doesn't know what happened before he was born, is foolish. In addition to history, you need to know the big ideas in the other disciplines, but learn them in a way so that they are in your mental lattice and you are constantly using them. If you don't then you will live in the middle ranks or shadows.

Inversion will help you solve problems. What will really fail in life. Sloth and unreliability. Avoid sloth and unreliability. If you are unreliable it doesn't matter what your virtues are. Doing what you are faithfully engaged to do should be a part of your conduct.

Self pity is a disastrous mode of thought. This can drift into paranoia.

You should appeal to individual interest. Perverse incentives (quota of billable hours per year) or perverse associations ( working under people you do not admire) should be avoided.

Objectivity maintenance . Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors.

Non egality. John Wooden said to the bottom five that if you don't get to play , you spar. The top seven got to play and they did the more learning. The game of life is getting a lot of practice into the hands of those who tend to be learning machine. Get the power into the right people.

Max Planck went around Germany giving talks on Quantum mechanics. His chauffeur travelled with him and asked Planck if he could deliver the lecture this time ( he had memorised it).

The chauffeur of Max Planck gave the lecture.

'I am surprised that in an advanced city like Munich can ask such an elementary question. I will let my chauffeur answer that question.'


Planck knowledge - the person who does know it, they have paid the dues.

Chauffeur knowledge , learnt to prattle the talk. 'I have described all the politicians in the USA.'

Job is to to get the responsibilty into the hands of the Planck knowledge.

Intense interest in the subject is indispensable.

Have a lot of ass a do it. A two partnership rule:

Whenever we are behind in our committments to other people we will work 14 hours a day until we catch up.

Life will have horrible blows but it doesn't matter. The attitude of Epicetus was :

Every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well., learn something and utilise the terrible blow and not to submit to self pity. Epicetus.


The thoughts of others..poem by Houseman. Like Houseman went through life anticipating troubles.

A seamless web of deserved trust