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
Written byCharlie Munger1 January 1924 – 28 November 2023 · investor, lawyer, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
Charlie Munger wrote it. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the line to Munger’s letter to Wesco stockholders dated 5 March 1990, published in Wesco Financial Corporation Annual Report 1989 — the letter begins on p. 54 and this sentence sits on p. 69. Munger chaired Wesco, and the wording is his exactly as quoted. What usually goes missing when the line is repeated is not the name but the source.
“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” Charlie Munger, letter to Wesco stockholders dated 5 March 1990, in Wesco Financial Corporation Annual Report 1989, p. 69. Via Quotle.info.
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Evoking the world of Charlie Munger — Investor, lawyer & Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Theme: "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". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
The document
Work
Wesco Financial Corporation Annual Report 1989
Form
Letter to Wesco stockholders from the Chairman of the Company, Charles T. Munger, dated 5 March 1990
Location
Letter begins p. 54; the sentence appears on p. 69. (Quote Investigator records a start page and a quote page, not an end page.)
Later appearances
Of Permanent Value (1994), p. 228 · Damn Right! (2000), p. 159 · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Expanded Third Edition (2008), inside Whitney Tilson’s “Mungerisms: Charlie Unscripted” compilation of annual-meeting highlights
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.
Quoted here as Quote Investigator transcribes it from the annual report. The surrounding paragraphs of the 1989 Wesco letter are not reproduced, because no freely accessible archive of that year’s report was located — Berkshire Hathaway’s own archive of Munger’s Wesco letters ↗ begins at 1997.
1990 — First documented appearance. Munger’s letter to Wesco stockholders, dated 5 March 1990, in Wesco Financial Corporation Annual Report 1989; the letter starts at p. 54 and the sentence falls on p. 69, per Quote Investigator ↗.
1994 and 2000 — Reproduced from the 1989 Wesco message in Andrew Kilpatrick’s Of Permanent Value (p. 228), then cited to the Wesco Financial 1989 annual report in Janet Lowe’s Damn Right! (p. 159), both logged by Quote Investigator ↗. Damn Right! is the book the later writers checked for this page reach for: both Farnam Street ↗ and TIME ↗ cite it rather than the report.
2008 — Appears again in Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition, edited by Peter D. Kaufman — not as a reprint of the letter, but inside Whitney Tilson’s “Mungerisms: Charlie Unscripted” compilation of annual-meeting highlights (citation ↗).
This is a 1990 corporate publication, not an old text: the letter is dated 5 March 1990 and appeared in Wesco Financial Corporation Annual Report 1989. Works first published in 1930 or earlier are now in the United States public domain; later works generally remain in copyright, and a 1990 corporate publication certainly does. So treat the sentence as in copyright and quote it as short attributed quotation rather than reproducing the letter.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Right author, missing source
The sentence is real, the wording is right, and so is the credit: every source located for this page gives it to Munger. What is almost always missing is where he wrote it.
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The wording that pulls Buffett into the line“people like [Warren Buffett and myself]” Wording variant
One version in circulation brackets the names straight into the sentence: QuotePics ↗ prints “people like [Warren Buffett and myself]” — and still credits Munger. The bracket is a later editorial gloss; Quote Investigator ↗ transcribes the annual report as “people like us.” Buffett appears in QI’s account as Munger’s close partner and as co-holder of the investment philosophy — never as the author of this sentence. No source located for this page credits him with it: it is absent from Wikiquote’s Buffett page ↗, including its Letters to Shareholders, Disputed and Misattributed sections, and from Novel Investor’s Buffett collection ↗.
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Why the second name gets read in“People like us” Our inference, not a finding
Munger wrote in the plural, about a partnership, in a letter signed as Chairman of Wesco Financial — a company that became a wholly owned Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary in 2011 ↗. Our reading is that this is what invites the bracketed gloss above: an unsourced plural has to be filled in by the reader, and Berkshire’s better-known half is the obvious candidate. That is a hypothesis about how the wording travels — not a claim Munger meant Buffett specifically, and not a documented misattribution.
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The source, when it is given at all“A letter to Wesco shareholders” Vague sourcing
Every correct attribution located for this page stops short of the report itself. Farnam Street ↗ and TIME ↗ cite it as a letter to Wesco shareholders found in Damn Right!; QuoteFancy ↗ credits Munger with no source at all. Quote Investigator is the source that supplies the date and the page.
✓Charlie Munger, to Wesco stockholders, 5 March 1990 — printed on page 69 of Wesco Financial Corporation’s 1989 annual report, and documented by Quote Investigator ↗.
Context
Why the source falls off
Munger was writing to the stockholders of Wesco Financial, a company he chaired, in the spring letter that accompanied its 1989 annual report. He was explaining why an unglamorous holding company kept compounding, and he refused to flatter anyone by calling it brilliance. The advantage, he said, came from being consistently not stupid — a lower bar, held for a very long time.
What travels is the sentence, not the citation. Every later use located for this page credits Munger correctly, and almost none of them names the 1989 Wesco report — they stop at “a letter to Wesco shareholders,” usually by way of Damn Right!. Our own reading of the one variant that does drag a second name into the line, the bracketed “people like [Warren Buffett and myself],” is that an unsourced plural invites a reader to fill it in; that is a hypothesis, not something the sources state. The quote is genuine, the sentiment is one both men repeated for decades, and the sentence is Munger’s.
A lower bar, held for a very long time.
Where the line turns up later
The sentence was picked up almost immediately by Berkshire chroniclers. Quote Investigator ↗ records it reproduced from Munger’s 1989 Wesco message in Andrew Kilpatrick’s Of Permanent Value in 1994 (p. 228), cited to the Wesco Financial 1989 annual report in Janet Lowe’s Damn Right! in 2000 (p. 159), and appearing again in Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Expanded Third Edition, edited by Peter D. Kaufman, in 2008 — there not as a reprint of the letter, but inside Whitney Tilson’s “Mungerisms: Charlie Unscripted” compilation of annual-meeting highlights.
Shane Parrish’s essay Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance ↗ uses the quotation to frame the amateur’s “loser’s game” — win by making fewer errors rather than better shots — and cites it, correctly, to a letter to Wesco shareholders as found in Damn Right!. That framing is Parrish’s; the sentence is Munger’s.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1924–2023 · Investor, lawyer & Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
Charles T. Munger trained as a lawyer — he co-founded the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson in 1962, where he practised as a real-estate attorney, before giving up law to manage investments full time. He served as Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway from 1978 until his death in 2023, and separately chaired Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 to 2011, writing Wesco’s annual shareholder letters himself. Those letters are where most of the sayings now called “Mungerisms” were first put in print, this one among them.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Charles T. Munger, letter to Wesco stockholders, dated March 5, 1990, in Wesco Financial Corporation Annual Report 1989 (1990), at 69 (letter begins at 54). Origin and citation established by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Trying To Be Consistently Not Stupid Instead of Trying To Be Very Intelligent” (August 25, 2025). Later appearances: Andrew Kilpatrick, Of Permanent Value (1994), 228; Janet Lowe, Damn Right! (2000), 159; and Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Expanded Third Edition, ed. Peter D. Kaufman (2008), in Whitney Tilson’s “Mungerisms: Charlie Unscripted” chapter.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘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’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-remarkable-how-much-long-term-advantage-people-like/