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The question

What lesson has mattered most in your life?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Charlie Munger

Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
Every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something and your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion.

USC Gould School of Law commencement, 2007, Speakola, 2007 source ↗

Others on this question

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Belinda Carlisle American singer
To stay in the moment and live each day to the maximum. You never know when it’s going to be taken away.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 March 2023 source ↗
Mohamed ElBaradei Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997-2009; Nobel Peace Prize 2005
I think that is the most important lesson you learn in life, that you have to be ready to make a compromise. You do not compromise your principles, but you have to be ready to compromise. You have to understand that you cannot get your way 100 percent. Life is too complicated. You are not an island, and you work in a social setting, and you need to understand that you work always — at the family level, at the society level — to work out the compromise that is perceived to be fair. You don’t get 100 percent of what you want, but at least you will get the basic minimum that you require.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 2006 source ↗

More from Charlie Munger

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Question What is an unusual habit or small pleasure you are oddly fond of? Daily life
All my life, I've gone through life anticipating trouble. And here I am, well along on my eighty-fourth year, and like Epictetus, I've had a favored life. It didn't make me unhappy to anticipate trouble all the time and be ready to perform adequately if trouble came. It didn't hurt me at all. In fact, it helped me.
Recorded USC Gould School of Law commencement, Speakola, 2007 source ↗

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