[1] Buffett described Munger as his closest partner and right-hand man, and credited him with being the "architect" of modern Berkshire Hathaway's business philosophy.

[3][4] His grandfather, Thomas Charles Munger, was a state representative and later a U.S. district court judge appointed by Theodore Roosevelt.

[8] After receiving a high score on the Army General Classification Test, he was ordered to study meteorology at Caltech in Pasadena, California,[9] the town he was to make his home.

[8] When he applied to his father's alma mater, Harvard Law School, the dean of admissions rejected him because Munger had not completed an undergraduate degree.

[10] Munger excelled in law school,[11] becoming a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and graduating in 1948 with a J.D., magna cum laude.

He maintained that treating the shares of a company like baseball cards is a losing strategy because it requires one to predict the behavior of often irrational and emotional human beings.

Wesco Financial also held a concentrated equity portfolio of over US$1.5 billion in companies such as Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, US Bancorp, and Goldman Sachs.

Munger believed that holding a concentrated number of stocks that he knew extremely well would in the long term produce superior returns.

"[24] During an interview and Q&A session at Harvard-Westlake School on January 19, 2010, Munger referred to American philosopher Charles Frankel in his discussion on the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the philosophy of responsibility.

Munger explained that Frankel believed: The system is responsible in proportion to the degree that the people who make the decisions bear the consequences.

In Munger's last 2023 interview with CNBC he credited his success and longevity to a long-held sense of caution and ability "to avoid all standard ways of failing".

[26] Munger used the term "Lollapalooza effect" for multiple biases, tendencies or mental models acting in compound with each other at the same time in the same direction.

[27] During a talk at Harvard in 1995 titled The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Munger mentioned Tupperware parties and open outcry auctions, where he explained "three, four, five of these things work together and it turns human brains into mush,"[28] meaning that normal people will be highly likely to succumb to the multiple irrational tendencies acting in the same direction.

In the open outcry auction, there is social proof of others bidding, reciprocation tendency, commitment to buying the item, and deprivation super-reaction syndrome, i.e. sense of loss.

"If you cater to those gambling chips, when people have money in their pocket for the first time, and you tell them they can make 30 or 40 or 50 trades a day, and you're not charging them any commission, but you're selling their order flow or whatever, I hope we don't have more of it.

In 2007, Munger made a $3 million gift to the University of Michigan Law School for lighting improvements in Hutchins Hall and the William W. Cook Legal Research Building, including the noted Reading Room.

[42] On December 28, 2011, Munger donated 10 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock (then valued at approximately $1.2 million total) to the University of Michigan.

[44][45] In 2023, Munger made a gift of stock worth $40 million to the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Museum in San Marino, California.

[46] Munger did not sign The Giving Pledge that was started by his partner Warren Buffett and co-director, Bill Gates,[47] explaining that he "[could]n't do it" because "[he had] already transferred so much to [his] children that [he had] already violated it.

[53] In 2004, the Mungers donated 500 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock, then valued at $43.5 million, to Stanford to build a graduate student housing complex.

[62] In October 2014, Munger announced that he would donate $65 million to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Munger Hall design ignores this evidence and seems to take the position that it doesn't matter ... [T]he building is a social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development of the undergraduates the university serves.

"[49] In August 2023, after widespread backlash to what critics called the "windowless dorm," UC Santa Barbara abandoned the project and began to solicit alternative housing proposals.

[76] Munger stated he was "not a normal Republican", for example advocating "Medicare for all" as a fix to the U.S. healthcare system, saying "I think we should have single-payer medicine eventually".

When doctors told him he had developed sympathetic ophthalmia, which could lead to blindness in his remaining eye, Munger started taking braille lessons.

[82][83] In the statement announcing his death, Warren Buffett said, "Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie's inspiration, wisdom and participation.