At the start of most workshops and facilitation sessions, I typically like to set the stage for our next few hours with a quote or two to get us thinking about what we know, but most often, about the power of what we don’t know. Many of my riches are shamelessly stolen (but always credited) to industry giant, Charlie Munger.
If you are unfamiliar with Charlie Munger, he was one of America’s most successful investors, the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and Warren Buffett’s business partner for almost forty years. He did in 2023 at the very ripe age of 99 years old. Although his titan of industry accomplishments were vast, I speculate he would have claimed his insatiable desire for learning to have been one of his greatest attributes.
In an homage to Charlie, and in keeping with this month’s theme of great quotes by great people, I would like to share a few of my favorite “Mungerisms” (my word, not his). And if your appetite is sparked, you can always devour more in David Clark’s The Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth.
- “Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.”
- “Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom.”
- “Part of the reason I’ve been a little more successful than most people is I’m good at destroying my own best-loved ideas.”
- “You can’t worship your own brilliance and succeed for long. The person who commits to learning wins, especially when they start out exceptionally smart.”
And being a bit of a bibliophile, I think my personal favorite might be:
- “In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time—none, zero.”
Challenge your own ideas.
Acknowledge you may be wrong.
Question your own assumptions.
Seemed to have worked pretty well for Mr. Munger.
Maybe we should give it a try.
