Charlie Munger: Great Investors Remain Rational, Objective, and Dispassionate

Here’s some great Charlie Munger quotes from the book Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor, by Tren Griffin. Munger is highlighting the importance of investors remaining rational, objective, and dispassionate:

Rationality is not just something you do so that you can make more money; it’s a binding principle. Rationality is a really good idea. You must avoid the nonsense that is conventional in one’s own time. It requires developing systems of thought that improve your batting average over time.

—CHARLIE MUNGER, WESCO ANNUAL MEETING, 2oo6

[An] increase in rationality is not just something you choose or don’t choose; it’s a moral duty to keep up as much as you reasonably can. It worked so well at Berkshire, not because we were so darned smart to start with—we were massively ignorant. Any of the great successes of Berkshire started with stupidity and failure.

—CHARLIE MUNGER, WESCO ANNUAL MEETING, 2011

The idea of being objective and dispassionate will never he obsolete.

—CHARLIE MUNGER, BERKSHIRE ANNUAL MEETING, 2003