[Ads-l] Request Charlie Munger quotation in 1989 Annual Report of Wesco

[Stephen Goranson]

I did not find the quote in ProQuest Historical Annual Reports searches, in
various tries, but may have missed it.
Though unfamiliar territory for me, I would not have guessed that it sounds
like a passage from a corporate report.
sg

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 2:39 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <
00001aa1be50b751-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> Famous U.S. investor Charlie Munger wrote about strategies for
> achieving wealth. The key was not concocting brilliant strategies;
> instead, the successful long-term investor triumphed by being
> "consistently not stupid".
>
> [Begin quotation]
> 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.
> [End quotation]
>
> Apparently, the statement from Munger appeared in the Wesco Financial
> Corporation Annual Report of 1989, but I have not been able to access
> this document. This report might be in the ProQuest Historical Annual
> Reports database. If someone can find and share an instance of this
> quotation before 1994 that would be very helpful.
>
> Here are details for the earliest match I could find in 1994:
>
> [ref] 1994 Copyright, Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett
> by Andrew Kilpatrick, Chapter 35: Wesco: "A tourist-class ticket",
> Quote Page 228, AKPE, Birmingham, Alabama. (Verified with scans)
> [/ref]
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Munger also makes the following point: "Wesco continues to try more to
> profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the
> esoteric. 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. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying,
> 'It's the strong swimmers who drown.'"
> [End excerpt]
>
> Thanks for any help you can provide
> Garson O'Toole
> QuoteInvestigator.com
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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