Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Best Of
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Best Of
Charlie Munger: "I think that a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time. Berkshire’s gained enormously from decisions by learning through a long, long period."
Hello everyone,
The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is around the corner (check out
for some good questions, for comprehensive coverage of everything Berkshire, and if you attend, check out the emerging manager meeting hosted by my friend Tilman)I’ve found past meetings to be a treasure trove of wisdom about investing, business, and life. You can find them all at CNBC, on Youtube, or listen to them as a podcast. Over the decades, Buffett and Munger have shared tons of laughs, stories, insights, and lessons.
I’ve listened to nearly all of them and have shared many excerpts on Twitter. Here are a few of my favorite quotes for the weekend. Might do a round 2 next week. Enjoy!
Warren and I know very successful businessmen who have not one true friend on earth. And that is no way to live a life. — Full quote
“When you get to be my age, you will be successful if the people that you would hope to have love you, do love you.”
“A public opinion poll will not get you rich on Wall Street.”
“You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”
“We will never be dependent on the kindness of strangers.”
“It's been our experience that envy is a bigger motivation than greed.”
“Interest rates power everything in the economic universe.”
“Anything times zero is zero. I don’t care how many wonderful figures are in between.”
“I love focused management.”
“People get fearful en masse. Confidence comes back one at a time.”
“The stock market is the most obliging, money-making place in the world because you don’t have to do anything.”
Advice to the young: “You will see plenty of inflation. The best protection is your own earning power. The second best is a wonderful business.”
“When you get to be my age, you will be successful if the people that you would hope to have love you, do love you.”
Charlie and I know a few people that have a lot of money. They get their names on buildings. And the truth is nobody loves them. Not their family, not the people who name the buildings after them. It’s sad. It’s something you can’t buy.
The only way to be loved is to be lovable. You’ll always get back more than you give away. And if you don’t give any, you don’t get any. It’s very simple. There is nobody I know that has the love of people around them, people they work with, their family, and their neighbors— that feels other than a success.
Munger zinger at the end:
"You don’t want to be like the motion picture executive in California. They said the funeral was so large because everybody wanted to make sure he was dead. "There’s a similar story about the minister saying at the funeral, “Won’t anybody stand up and say a good word for the deceased?” And there was this long silence. Finally one guy stood up and he said, “Well,” he said, “his brother was worse.”"
“We don’t pay any attention to what people say about stocks. A public opinion poll will not get you rich on Wall Street.”
Anytime I see some article that says, these analysts say this or that about some business, it doesn’t mean anything to us.
“We have the attitude that you can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”
We just forget about it. We don’t try and protect ourselves by contracts, due diligence. We forget about it. We can do fine over time, dealing with people that we like, admire, and trust.
The bad actor will try and tantalize you in one way or another. You won’t win. It just pays to avoid them. We started out with that attitude, and maybe one or two experiences have convinced us, even more so, that that’s the way to play the game.
“We will never be dependent on the kindness of strangers.”
👉 Full quote (video)
We will never go to sleep at night worrying about any event that’s taken place that could hurt our ability to keep playing our game. We spent too long building Berkshire to have one moment destroy us.
Credit is a lot like oxygen. You don’t notice it 99% of the time. But if it’s absent, it’s the only thing you notice.
“It's been our experience that envy is a bigger motivation than greed.”
You can hand somebody a $2 million bonus, and they’re fine until they find out that the person next to them got $2 million and $1, and then they’re sick for the next year."
“Interest rates power everything in the economic universe.”
👉 Full quote (video)
Interest rates are to asset prices like gravity is to the apple. When there are very low interest rates, there’s a very small gravitational pull on asset prices."
“Anything times zero is zero. I don’t care how many wonderful figures are in between.”
Charlie and I have seen a lot of very smart people go broke, or end up with very mediocre records. 99 out of the 100 things they did were intelligent but the hundredth did them in.
“I love focused management.”
If you read the Coca-Cola annual report, you will not get the idea that Roberto Goizueta is thinking about a whole lot of things other than Coca-Cola. And I have seen that work time after time.
“People get fearful en masse. Confidence comes back one at a time.”
👉 Full quote (video)
It’s just the way humans are. That’s where Charlie and I have an edge. We don't really get caught up with what other people are doing. When other people are fearful, when people get scared, it’s very, very pervasive.
“The stock market is the most obliging, money-making place in the world because you don’t have to do anything.”
That’s how Charlie and I got rich. It’s a marvelous game.
Advice to the young: “You will see plenty of inflation. The best protection is your own earning power. The second best is a wonderful business.”
Munger: “Become a brain surgeon and invest in Coca-Cola instead of government bonds.”
