Buffett and Munger are deeply suspicious of investment propositions that are framed as being too easy or guaranteed to be profitable, as these framings signal the proposition is likely fraudulent or dishonest.

A Democratic politician who doesn't understand how capitalism transformed China through adoption of market mechanisms is nuts (irrational in their thinking about economics).

Modern critics using the term 'socialism' often do not mean the classic definition of state control of the means of production, but rather are arguing for changes to tax policy.

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are explicit in supporting more progressive taxation, particularly regarding the estate tax.

Bernie Sanders, who is pulling the second-highest support in the Democratic Party, was a socialist until very recently, and advocates for policies like caps on wealth and eliminating billionaires, which goes beyond redistribution into systemic wealth limits.

The market system is brutal and leaves behind people who are perfectly wonderful but lack market-related talents or have bad luck, but this problem exists within a system that generates enormous aggregate wealth.

The private sector does much better than the government sector, which is illustrated by the poor quality of government services like the Post Office that would only be worse if applied to healthcare (socialized medicine).

Inversion—thinking backwards about what would cause failure—is a practical mental trick that solves problems easily, whereas forward thinking cannot solve them easily, making it analogous to solving algebra problems by inverting them

The Permian Basin is America's number one oil reservoir with no comparable alternative, and Permian Basin oil investments with preferred stock status, preferred dividends of 8%, and management by talented production engineers who outperform competitors in shale are 'no-brainer' investments that do not require extensive due diligence

Financial success does not require extreme intelligence or prodigy-level ability; rather, it comes from learning a few basic tricks that enable non-prodigy people to achieve prodigious results

Leverage buyout firms spend enormous resources on due diligence (armies of young lawyers charging high hourly rates reviewing purchasing orders) on companies like EZy, but this is unnecessary because you don't need to examine purchasing orders to understand whether a company is fundamentally good

Applying the grandfather's wisdom of 'swim as long as you want but stay near the shore' to business and life means identifying risks on the other side of situations and avoiding them, which is a discipline of looking at vulnerabilities

The ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) taught Munger the mortar-shell technique of firing one shot over and one shot short to bracket the target, which he has applied as a mental trick throughout his life to determine what size to make things (over and under and kapow)

A real estate appraiser was valuing a ranch easement incorrectly at $125,000 because he thought the problem through in only two dimensions (comparable sales per acre times acreage), missing the three-dimensional reality that utility towers would freeze the grade and prevent the optimal three-dimensional development of hilly land (removing hilltops and filling valleys)

By correcting the appraiser's two-dimensional thinking to three-dimensional analysis, Munger was able to increase the client's settlement from the Edison Company from $125,000 to $600,000—an outcome that was 'not at all hard' because Edison's honest engineers also thought in three dimensions

Many lawyers make mistakes with problems like the Edison easement case because they don't pay attention to fundamentals; people like the appraiser who don't know their own business well are 'always with us,' but the mental trick of constantly going back to basics provides a significant advantage

Munger was able to make a major acquisition of an Exxon Darko (large oil company) stock investment in approximately two days by using his 'bag of tricks' rather than extensive due diligence, with minimal research beyond understanding basic business fundamentals

Munger and Buffett have such a long-standing relationship that they can communicate with just 'one grunt' and speak volumes to each other, enabling rapid decision-making without extensive discussion

You don't need perfect information to act; being 96% sure is 'all you're entitled to' in many cases, and excessive due diligence is often a sign of weak thinking and insecurity rather than prudence

People with mental insecurity should not be in positions of decision-making, as their insecurity leads them to do excessive due diligence that doesn't work and interferes with sound judgment