Peter Kaufman Quotes

St. Peter:  “Who is knocking at my gate?” Voice: “It is I.” St. Peter: “Go away, we don’t need any more school teachers here!

I wanted to get rich so I could be independent, like Lord John Maynard Keynes.' Independence is the end that wealth serves for Charlie, not the other way around.

Munger, like Buffett, believes a successful investment career boils down to only a handful of decisions. So when Charlie likes a business, he makes a very large bet and typically holds the position for a long period.

When you do as everyone else does, don’t be surprised when you get what everyone else gets.” — Peter Kaufman

However, all man's desired geometric progressions, if a high rate of growth is chosen, at last come to grief on a finite earth.

modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

[It's] a funny business because on a net basis, the whole investment management business together gives no value added to all buyers combined. That's the way it has to work.

When I was younger, the major accounting firms were quite ethical places, and nobody got filthy rich. But in the space of twenty-five years, they sold out to terrible behavior, one little step at a time.

You'll better understand the evil of top audit firms starting to sell fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you that one told me that they're better [than the others] because they only sold [the schemes] to their top twenty clients, so no one would notice.

Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace.

capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.

It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge

There is no better teacher than history in determining the future.... There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.

Just avoid things like AIDS situations, racing trains to the crossing, and doing cocaine.

Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There's a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time-none, zero.

don't believe that psychology professors in America are people whose alternative career paths were in the toughest part of physics. And that may be one of the reasons why they don't get it quite right.

In the last analysis, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.

That sounds funny, making friends among 'the eminent dead,' but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better for you in life and work better in education. It's way better than just giving the basic concepts.

work providing much more value to others.

I notice that when all a man’s information is confined to the field in which he is working, the work is never as good as it ought to be. A man has to get perspective, and he can get it from bools or from people-preferably from both.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember your lies.

While poor outcomes are excusable in the Munger|Buffett world–given the fact that some outcomes are outside of their control–sloppy preparation and decision making are never excusable because they ARE controllable.

If you could see the world the way I see it, you’d understand why I behave the way I do.

Peter Kaufman, CEO of Glenair and one of the smartest people you will ever come across, once wrote: We tend to take every precaution to safeguard our material possessions because we know what they cost. But at the same time we neglect things which are much more precious because they don’t come with price tags attached: The real value of things like our eyesight or relationships or freedom can be hidden to us, because money is not changing hands.

In investing, just as in baseball, to put runs on the scoreboard, one must watch the playing field, not the scoreboard.

Peter Kaufman summarized Munger’s investing principles (risk, independence, preparation, intellectual humility, analytic rigor, allocation, patience, decisiveness, change, and focus) in a checklist form. This is a must-read for all investors. It’s

Charlie marches to his own music, and it's music like virtually no one else is listening to.

I would have to say that Charlie is not looking for anyone to have an effect on him, but that Nancy has done a remarkable job in spite of that fact.

understood and respected the value of one's word.

You don't need to take the last dollar" and "Choose clients as you would choose friends.

Still, the special strength of extra-vivid images in influencing the mind can be constructively used (1) in persuading someone else to reach a correct conclusion or (2) as a device for improving one's own memory by attaching vivid images, one after the other, to many items one doesn't want to forget. Indeed, such use of vivid images as memory boosters is what enabled the great orators of classical Greece and Rome to give such long, organized speeches without using notes.

The Most Important Thing and others, including Seth Klarman, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Bruce Newberg, Michael Milken, Jacob Rothschild, Todd Combs, Roger Altman, Joel Greenblatt, Peter Kaufman and Doug Kass.

RECOMMENDED READING Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015. Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009. Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015. Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015. Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015. Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger, compiled by Peter D Kaufman3 The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma4 Letters from a Stoic by Seneca5 Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman6 Mastery by Robert Greene7 Meditations by Marcus Aurelius8 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson9 The Obstacle Is the Way

Every statistician knows that a large, relevant sample size is their best friend. What are the three largest, most relevant sample sizes for identifying universal principles? Bucket number one is inorganic systems, which are 13.7 billion years in size. It’s all the laws of math and physics, the entire physical universe. Bucket number two is organic systems, 3.5 billion years of biology on Earth. And bucket number three is human history, you can pick your own number, I picked 20,000 years of recorded human behavior. Those are the three largest sample sizes we can access and the most relevant.” —Peter Kaufman