In his own words
Munger on Patience
14 sourced quotes. All themes
“If you buy a business just because it's undervalued, then you have to worry about selling it when it reaches its intrinsic value. That's hard. But if you can buy a few great companies, then you can sit on your ass. That's a good thing.”
Munger's 'sit on your ass investing' concept. The catchphrase is verifiably his (reaffirmed in his 2023 CNBC interview); this longer wording is the commonly circulated version.
“It takes character to sit there with all that cash and do nothing. I didn't get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.”
“The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting.”
Ubiquitously credited to Munger and consistent with his views, but no primary source confirms the exact words. The idea traces to Jesse Livermore ('It was always my sitting,' Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, 1923). Present as 'attributed,' not as a verified Munger original.
“I learned this trick early. They've done that experiment with the two marshmallows with the little kids... The little kids who were good at deferring the marshmallows are also the people who succeed in life. It's all deferred gratification.”
“The fact that it's so awful to grind through means that the people who want easy gratification don't come in. If it seems slow and painful to you, we kind of like it that way.”
“There are huge advantages for an individual to get into a position where you make a few great investments and just sit back and wait: You're paying less to brokers. You're listening to less nonsense.”
“If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we'd have a pretty average record. It wasn't hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience.”
Captures his concentration philosophy; the exact dated occasion is not pinned.
“Watchful waiting is painful if you're action prone. Fortunately, I don't believe in being too action prone in life.”
Approximate wording, from Outstanding Investor Digest's published excerpts of the 2003 Wesco Q&A.
“It's kind of a snare and a delusion to outguess macroeconomic cycles. Very few people do it successfully and some of them do it by accident. When the game is that tough, why not adopt the other system of swimming as competently as you can?”
Lightly condensed from one continuous passage — no words changed.
“It's amazing how intelligent it is to spend some time just sitting. A lot of people are way too active.”
“Maybe five or six times in a lifetime you get a chance to do it. People who do it two or three times early all go broke because they think it's easy. In fact, it's very hard and rare.”
Wording lightly normalized from a spoken passage.
“I think the record shows the advantage of a peculiar mind-set — not seeking action for its own sake, but instead combining extreme patience with extreme decisiveness.”
From Lowe's biography.
“It takes a very patient person to get rich in insurance. It takes forever to get anything, and it takes forever to push anybody aside. It's very hard to make money.”
“I think this stuff is utterly precious. I feel it's like the topsoil of Iowa. We don't want it to go away too fast.”
On opposing the rapid export of U.S. oil and gas.