You know what I came down today it’s been it’s been 50 54 years since I broke down the highway to search the Cornhusker Highway to come and make it to school. And even then there was a lot of nostalgia attached with it because my father had attended the University of Nebraska in the 1920s. He was editor of The Daily Nebraskan and one day a yachting woman from West Point student who came in to apply for a job as a reporter on the day in Nebraska. And and I thought not only hired her as a reporter but he married her shortly thereafter. So both my parents attended here. My grandfather my mother’s side was here and in the 80s 90s and so a lot of good things that happened to me because of the interest in Nebraska. I received a terrific education here I was telling the dean the most valuable thing I learned here but I learned a lot but most valuable was accounting and we had a wonderful professor named Gray Dean. There may even be something named for him down here. Yeah. I mean he was. I’d been to the Wharton School I went to call me graduate school subsequently but I took a lot of accounting courses but by far the best instruction I received in accounting came from rading and there’s nothing more important either. People ask me what is your take in business school and how or even if they don’t go to business school what they need to know before getting in business. I tell them you know you have to.

你知道吗，今天我回到这里，距离当年沿着康哈斯克公路赶来上学，已过去约五十四年。即便那时，我已对这里怀有强烈的怀旧之情，因为我的父亲在二十世纪二十年代就读于内布拉斯加大学。他曾担任《内布拉斯加日报》主编，有一天，一位来自西点的年轻女士来应聘记者，他不仅录用了她，不久后还娶了她。因此，我的父母都曾在这里就读；我的外祖父在十九世纪八九十年代也在这里。因而内布拉斯加为我带来了许多美好事物。我在这里接受了极佳的教育——我告诉院长，我学到很多东西，其中最重要的是会计。我们有一位出色的教授格雷·迪恩，这里甚至可能以他命名了什么。我曾在沃顿商学院和哥伦比亚研究生院就读，修过大量会计课程，但最好的教学无疑来自迪恩教授。没有什么比这更重要。人们问我：上商学院该学什么？或者即使不上商学院，在踏入商业前需要懂什么？我告诉他们：你必须懂会计。

You have to understand accounting it’s the language of media. It would be like being in a foreign country without knowing the language if you’re in business you don’t understand accounting. So is it you want to get as comfortable with that as you are with the English language. It’s made me a lot of money because I listen to what radio had to say that three or four years ago and I’ve been able to understand what I was seeing on pieces of paper what that told me about businesses and the limitations of what it told me about businesses. Yeah but that’s the way we invest. Yesterday I was in Knoxville Tennessee and we bought a company. We agreed to buy a company called Clayton Homes about a week ago was a big company and manufactured home business. We agreed to pay one point seven billion dollars for it. I made that deal over the phone without ever meeting the people there. But I had seen enough through reading and case 10 Qs annual reports but looking at figures what they tell me in terms of the kind of people even running the place the kind of accounting decisions they make and so I was able to make that one point seven billion dollar transactions over the phone yesterday with the first time I met the people and their board of directors had actually approved the deal a week earlier. So it’s you know I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t of had a great time at rating’s class 53 years ago.

你必须理解会计，它是商业的语言。若身处商界却不懂会计，就像在异国却不会当地语言。因此，你要像掌握英语那样熟练掌握会计。正因为几十年前我听从了迪恩教授的话，我才能读懂报表中的数字，了解它们反映企业的实情及局限——我们就是这样投资的。昨天我在田纳西诺克斯维尔收购了一家公司。一周前我们同意以十七亿美元收购装配式住宅巨头克莱顿房屋。我通过电话达成这笔交易，与对方从未谋面。但通过阅读10-K、10-Q、年报，透过数字，我已足够了解那里的管理者及其会计决策，于是昨天便在电话中敲定了交易，而他们的董事会一周前已批准。如果没有五十三年前在迪恩课堂上的经历，我绝做不到这一点。

So if I’m if I’m going to tout one thing aside from this particular leadership class of course that’s how I think I would I would I would tell you that I get comfortable with it. You know it may not happen the first week or the first month in the class but I get very comfortable accounting so that I run into CEOs periodically who really don’t understand it you know they try to bluff their way through and you can just see in their faces are frightened almost when somebody has a balance sheet or income statement they really don’t know what it means. And they have to count on somebody else and that’s something you shouldn’t count on. We make our acquisition decisions ourselves. We don’t call in consultants or anybody we don’t call it doesn’t bankers much to their disgust. No investment banking fees and the Klayton deal because you know it’s my responsibility running Berkshire to understand enough about our acquisition decisions to make them based on the numbers that I see and what I see there. This is our about leadership and I’d like to talk just for a minute about that and then I’d like to really talk about whatever’s on your mind and we’ll get questions by the leadership. Obviously it’s a very it’s a very simple thing in concept. My job as leader of Berkshire Hathaway is to have visions and goals for the company overall. A long time horizon and attached to them and then they get those goals accomplished through other people. Well that’s what it’s all about. I can’t do it myself. So I have the acting I have to know where I want us to get to.

如果我要在这堂领导力课之外强调一件事，那就是学好会计。也许在课堂的第一周或第一月你还不熟练，但要让自己对会计驾轻就熟。我经常遇到不懂会计的CEO，他们试图蒙混过关；当别人拿出资产负债表或损益表时，你能看出他们几乎带着恐惧，因为他们不懂含义，只能依赖他人——这绝非可靠之计。我们的收购决策完全自主，不请顾问，也不找投行——这让投行很失望——克莱顿交易就没有投行费用。作为伯克希尔的掌舵人，我有责任透彻理解数字，以此做出收购决定。谈到领导力，我的职责是为伯克希尔制定长远愿景与目标，并通过他人实现。我个人无法独立完成一切，所以必须清楚公司要到达的方向。

I have to see over the next mountain if possible but then I have had a lot of other people to look over that mountain with me and really do the job and they are the ones that get accomplished so it gets getting things done through other people. Now Berkshire is like some like many large corporations in certain ways but it’s really quite different in many ways. We have over 150000 people now working for Berkshire Hathaway and dozens of companies throughout this country primarily and even abroad a little bit. We have exactly fifteen point eight people in headquarters and they’re breaking down today so we’ve only got thirteen point eight. They’re there today and probably working well with those thirteen point eight as we would if have an eye with the office. But that is a huge organization. I mean we we have dozens of operating managers CEOs of their businesses out there running them today and they do it without any direction from the Home Office except for one very limited piece of direction that I give them which I’ll get to in a second. But we have these people and there are an unusual group of people running these businesses because most of them have sold their businesses to us and they’re very very wealthy. Three quarters of our managers do not need to work financially. We have no reason financially to work probably three quarters of them are worth at least 50 million dollars and we have some that are worth in the billions. And yet these people jump out of bed every morning and go and work and they work weekends and they love working. And why is that. And what’s the key to that. Well the key really is the same reason I keep working.

如果可能，我得望见下一个山头，但我还需要许多人与我一起眺望并真正完成工作——成果是他们创造的，也就是通过他人达成目标。伯克希尔在某些方面与其他大型企业相似，但亦有显著不同。如今我们拥有十五万多名员工，在全国数十家公司工作，海外亦有少量布局。而总部只有 15.8 人——今天有几位不在岗，所以只有 13.8 人——但运转依旧顺畅。这是庞大的组织，我们有数十位运营经理、各自业务的CEO，他们今天独立运营，无需总部指令，除了我给的极为有限的指导。大多数人把企业卖给我们，本身极为富有；四分之三的经理财务上无需工作，他们中多数身家至少五千万美元，有些身价数十亿。尽管如此，他们每天仍充满激情地工作，周末也乐此不疲。原因何在？秘诀是什么？其实秘诀正是我自己仍继续工作的原因。

I’m 72 I’m getting Social Security now so I know I I should be in for a good off pushing shuffleboard around or something Besart. But what I do what I can do anything in the world I want to do. But what I want to do is run Berkshire Hathaway. Why do I want to write it that way. There’s a couple things. A I get to paint my own painting. I go down there every day and I feel like and feel like Michelangelo there working on the Sistine Chapel or something nobody else might think is a great painting but I get to paint my own painting. I do not have people second guessing me. I did not have people saying his use of little more red paint than blue pay my bills are paid these aprons and I will say I get to do my own thing. It’s it’s the form of creativity. It’s exactly like somebody feels that a professional offers really feels that the Pinkard they’re not doing it for the money primarily they’re doing it because they like doing something well that they happen to be down down the road of their talents. And the second thing I like frankly is I like I like a pause like appreciation. So I like having shareholders who feel good about what I’m gonna be the most. It’s you know I have a 96 year old aunt and her husband. It was the YouTube. And she is you know she had she has all the money. Berkshire Hathaway she counts on me and she’s out in Palm Springs now.

我今年 72 岁，已经开始领取社保，按理说该在度假村打打沙狐球之类。但我可以做任何想做的事，而我想做的就是经营伯克希尔·哈撒韦。为什么？原因有二：第一，我能自由“作画”。每天走进办公室，我仿佛米开朗基罗在创作西斯廷礼拜堂壁画——也许别人不觉得那幅画伟大，但我能亲手挥洒。没人指手画脚说我红色用多了、蓝色用少了；账单付清、围裙扎好，我按自己的想法创造。这是一种创造力的体现，就像真正的职业艺术家作画——他们主要不是为钱，而是因热爱而在天赋道路上精进。第二，我喜欢掌声与认可；我喜欢看到股东因我而安心。我有位 96 岁的姨妈和她丈夫，把全部资产投在伯克希尔，并在棕榈泉信赖我。

And hold worth isn’t Bircher and I’ve got cousins everybody in our family has got a hold of my overshirt. And so those people are counting on me. And that’s kind of fun to have something where you can actually deliver for other people and change their lives in positive ways. As a matter of fact we had a couple that nobody had ever heard of up until a few years ago. The officers in New York they came from Omaha and Don Offner went to Central High that OTHMER Sure which high school she went to an all male probably South High. They left 750 million dollars when they died. Nobody ever heard of them. And I think a substantial portion went right here to the interest in Nebraska. It was probably a total surprise to the university when they got I don’t know how we got 150 million or so. Yeah. Yeah well you should have rehabbers but nevertheless you know you see the money you see good things happening out of that. So it’s fun. Mean it’s you know it beats. It beats playing golf every day or something for it.

其实家族里表亲们也都“拽着”我的外套，他们都在依赖我。能真正为他人创造价值、积极改变他们的生活，这很有趣。几年前，有对默默无闻的奥斯默夫妇去世——二人来自奥马哈，唐·奥斯默毕业于中央高中，他妻子大概就读南高中——遗产高达 7.5 亿美元。没人听说过他们，却把相当大一部分捐给了内布拉斯加大学；学校突然收到约 1.5 亿美元，想必非常惊讶。看到这些资金带来美好变化令人欣慰，总好过天天打高尔夫之类的消遣。

So I say if that’s what turns me on well it’s going to turn on these managers that are out there buying things like Clayton Hollonds or we’ve got a company Flight Safety trains more pilots than anybody in the world. Flight Safety is run by an 85 year old man. She started the company with ten thousand dollars in 1951. It now trains four or five times as many pilots as non-military pilots as any anybody in the world.

正因如此，这份激情既能激励我，也能激励那些收购克莱顿住宅等公司的经理人。我们旗下还有飞行安全公司，培训飞行员数量全球最多。它由一位现年 85 岁的创始人于 1951 年用 1 万美元起家，如今培训的非军用飞行员数量是任何其他机构的四五倍。

And he is there at 85 and then it’s a matter of public record he’s got a billion dollars worth of Berkshire shares. He works seven days a week. He loves it and he loves it for the same reason that I love what I do. He gets to do it his way. He buys these big simulators that train pilots and he doesn’t have that check with me as to whether to spend 50 million dollars for a simulator. He doesn’t ask me so much more about it than I do why in the world body asked me well I can’t tell what kind of a plane. I bet you know what I’m flying around. And Alice is spending a couple hundred million dollars a year on simulators. Suspending Berkshire Hathaway money. And he never checks with them. He’s never had to come to Omaha for any kind of meetings. He runs his own business and that’s what he loves in life and I let him do it and that’s my contribution to it is is really turning loose his energies and you know they were properly directed before we bought the company seven or eight years ago. Why should I think that you know he couldn’t keep running it after that. And like I say at 85 he sold. The second thing that our managers like in addition to this painting their own painting is they too love applause. I mean I try to be I report in my annual report accurately what they have accomplished but they accomplished a lot. You heard Susan Jacques I think some weeks ago here Susan came to abortion times and she was making four dollars an hour four dollars an hour.

他今年 85 岁，公开资料显示他持有价值 10 亿美元的伯克希尔股票。他每周工作七天，乐在其中，原因与我对工作的热爱如出一辙——他能按自己的方式行事。他购买用于训练飞行员的大型模拟器，从不需征求我是否该花 5000 万美元买一台；他知道得比我多得多，我甚至说不清自己乘坐的是什么型号飞机。艾利斯每年花费数亿美元购买模拟器，动用的是伯克希尔资金，却从不请示，也无需飞到奥马哈参加任何会议。他经营自己的公司，这是他毕生所爱，而我所做的贡献就是放手让他尽情施展——在我们七八年前收购该公司之前，他的精力就已得到正确引导，我没有理由怀疑他此后不能继续管理；正如我说的，他 85 岁仍干劲十足。除了能“自行作画”，我们的经理们也同样喜欢掌声。我在年度报告中尽力准确记录他们的成就，但他们做得远不止于此。几周前你们听过苏珊·雅克的故事——她当年在博谢曼时代加入公司时，时薪只有 4 美元。

And at age before she was 40 she became CEO of the second largest independent jewelry operation in the United States for about an hour. It’s down you know. And Susan knows more about I don’t know. But surely you know you could have a phony diamond or real time and I couldn’t tell the difference but if I started telling Susan what to order in a way of jewelry or if I started telling her what kind of terms or eccentric customers are hiring like that she doesn’t need that and she really owns sport shops. You know we have a stock certificate. We get the profit. We got accustomed to. But it’s her baby it’s her baby she decides you know everything about that place and. And so it’s her creation and that feeling of ownership is really extraordinary and it’s so much better. I mean that’s the way I like to work. And it’s the way it’s the way Susan Jacques likes to work it’s the way Ali Velshi likes to work. And Susan like anybody else in this world loves being appreciated. I mean it should be something wrong with her. She did. And the truth is nobody appreciates her more than I do. I mean she is a talent and we are lucky to have her. And we’re lucky to have all of these other managers so leadership. But Berkshire really consists of taking a bunch of people who in a baseball analogy with the 400 hitters and just handing him the back and just telling him to get off their plate and take a big swing there’s very little to it beyond that. One thing I do is I sent him a letter.

在四十岁之前，苏珊就成为了全美第二大独立珠宝公司的首席执行官——这可不是说着玩的。苏珊对珠宝的了解远超我等凡人；真钻与假钻摆在我面前，我恐怕分辨不出，但如果我去指示苏珊该进什么货、给什么样的客户定何种条款，那就是画蛇添足。实际上，这家公司就像她的孩子；我们手里只有股票凭证、分享利润，但真正的一切决策都由她说了算。这种强烈的“主人翁”感觉非同寻常，也让成果更上一层楼——我喜欢这样的工作方式，苏珊·雅克喜欢，阿里·维尔希也喜欢。和世上所有人一样，苏珊渴望被认可；若她不在意，那才不正常。事实上，没有人比我更欣赏她——她天赋异禀，我们能拥有她以及其他这些卓越的经理人，实在幸运。伯克希尔的领导力，说到底，就是把一群“打击率四成”的球员交上球棒，告诉他们站定击球、放手一搏，仅此而已。我做的一件事，就是给他们写信。

We don’t have meetings and also our managers know that there are any meetings there and there no there’s no catechism or anything else. Once every two years I sent them. This is it was enough for one and a half pages or so only the instruction that they don’t they don’t send budgets to us we don’t we don’t care about their company whose budgets don’t use budgets. We just give them some of the managers I talked to a couple of times a week because they like to talk frequently. Some of them I talk to literally once a year because they don’t want to talk to me. AD Well you know it’s up to them. I adapt to that. The only thing I tell them and this letter was when on January 20th 2003 it says it’s been two and a half years since my last memo. Now I’m a pig. Have you have the managers out there have been two and a half years and they heard from the Home Office been two and a half years since my last mammal. Here are a couple things to keep in mind. And number one and this is number one every time this doesn’t change your own change. Two years in our four years in our situation number one we can’t afford to lose money. Even a lot of money we cannot afford to lose reputation even a shred of reputation. Let’s be sure that everything we do in business is going to really be reported on the front page of a national newspaper in an article written by an unfriendly but intelligent reporter in many areas including acquisitions Berkshire’s results have benefited from his reputation.

我们不开大会，经理们也清楚：没有例行会议、没有教条。每隔两年，我才给他们发一封信，一页半纸足矣；唯一的指示是：别给总部递预算——我们不需要也不在乎各自公司的预算。对有些经理，我每周聊两三次，因为他们喜欢交流；对另一些人，我一年只通一次话，他们不想聊，我就顺其自然。我在 2003 年 1 月 20 日的信里写道：“距离上次备忘录已过去两年半。”——可见他们两年半没从总部得到任何文件。信中只有几点要点：第一，也是永远的第一条——我们可以承受赔钱，哪怕很多钱，但绝不能失去声誉，哪怕一丝一毫。务必确保我们的一切商业行为都经得起考验：假设一个不友好却聪明的记者会把它登在全国报纸头版。包括收购在内，伯克希尔过往业绩很大程度得益于良好声誉。

And we don’t want to do anything that in any way could turn vision. Last year Berkshire was ranked by Fortune as the fourth most admired company in the world. This year we were third the United States they just published and it took us thirty seven years to get there but we could lose it in 37 minutes. And that’s the message. I mean we we we can lose money. Not sure to make money but we’ve got we’ll figure out ways to make money but we can’t lose it. We can’t lose a shred of reputation because you don’t get it back and you can’t get 37 minutes because you can lose it a lot faster than that you can lose it in five minutes. And that I was talking to Bruce coming in and he did some work around Salomon Brothers and I went back there 11 years ago because this firm which had just as it had the second largest balance sheet in the United States at that time it was it was a preeminent firm on Wall Street. John good friend who would who ran it had his picture in front of BusinessWeek as the king of Wall Street. And in April late April 1991 he made a fateful decision. It was reported to him that an employee down the line had flimflams to the U.S. Treasury had broken some rules to try to play games with the and John did not report that back to the Treasury or the Federal Reserve or the FCC or to anybody else. He didn’t do anything wrong himself but he just he he got behind the curve. He didn’t report it.

我们绝不能做任何有损这份声誉的事。去年，《财富》将伯克希尔评为全球最受尊敬公司第四名；今年，我们位列美国第三。这需要 37 年才攀上高位，却可能在 37 分钟内坠落——信息就这么简单。我们可以亏钱，亏了再想办法赚回来；但名誉一旦丢失，就永远失去，而且毁掉名誉往往不需 37 分钟，5 分钟足矣。我进门时正和布鲁斯谈起所罗门兄弟往事：11 年前我接管这家当时全美资产负债表排名第二、华尔街翘楚的公司。其掌门人约翰·古德弗兰德曾登上《商业周刊》封面，被誉为“华尔街之王”。然而 1991 年 4 月底，他犯下致命错误——有人向他报告，下属违规操弄美国国债拍卖。约翰本人虽未作恶，却没有把此事上报财政部、联储、SEC等任何机构，结果被形势反噬。

The president of the company Tommy Strauss didn’t report it if you saw that Katie Curry show on Sunday night on the Central Park jogger Tom Straus was on the air. But Tom Strauss ended up getting losing his EEGs President Zoellner brother John was chairman. John good friend. Ah they didn’t do anything. They they dawdled and after a few weeks the same guy that Dunn committed the terrible acts earlier on May 15th. He did the same thing again in a Treasury auction and now they were in this terrible pickle because they had known about this. On April 28 this guy was a bad actor and they hadn’t done anything and I’m an atheist he does the same thing again. And now they go they start feeling it they go and talk about it. You know that people will say well why weren’t you in here before. So they just kept trying to shove it out of her mind to do other things. And it came within inches of destroying a firm to destroy their careers. I mean the friend who spent 30 years on Wall Street had a fire a fine reputation the king of Wall Street was brought down by one simple act of omission. All he had to do is pick up the phone. Jerry Corrigan was head of the New York Fed. He had to pick up the phones say Jerry you won’t believe this about this crazy guy in our treasury department. Phil Mosher has just done this thing and I’m terribly embarrassed. What can we do to make it right.

公司总裁 Tommy Strauss 并没有报告此事——如果你周日晚上看了 Katie Curry 关于中央公园慢跑者的节目，你会看到 Tom Straus 上了节目。可是 Tom Strauss 最终丢掉了他的职位；Zoellner 总裁的兄弟 John 是董事长，也是 John Goodfriend 的好友。然而他们什么也没做，只是拖拖拉拉。几周后，那位在 5 月 15 日犯下严重错误的人又在一次国债拍卖中做了同样的事，而他们明知此人有问题却袖手旁观，结果陷入了大麻烦。早在 4 月 28 日，他们就知道这家伙是个坏分子，却始终未采取行动，结果他再次作案。我是个无神论者——他再次故技重施。于是他们开始慌了神，四处商量对策。人们难免要问：“你们为什么之前不报告？”他们只好把事情压在心底，去做别的事。最后差点毁掉整家公司，也断送了自己的职业生涯。我的那位在华尔街奋斗 30 年的朋友——昔日声誉卓著、“华尔街之王”——就因为一次简单的疏忽而被拉下马。他只需拿起电话：纽约联储主席 Jerry Corrigan 就在那头；只要告诉他说：“Jerry，你不会相信我们国债部那个疯子干了什么。Phil Mosher 刚干了这事，我很惭愧。我们该怎么补救？”

I mean you know and Jerry Corrigan being Jerry Horrigan turned red in the face and gotten very Madon a lot of language I couldn’t repeat here. But in the end he would have said thanks for calling him and talking about it immediately. You know will slap a fine on your do whatever is appropriate. And the next day the firm go on fine. But what John Goodfriend actually you know perfectly ok guy but he just he didn’t act like count and Tommy Strauss who was number two the same way. And later on they were fined and certainly kicked out of the Securities Industry and Solomon barely survived. Eight thousand employees around the world had their future in real jeopardy because of that single act. So just just apply the newspaper test. That’s what I tell our managers. I can have a thousand page book of ethics I got all kinds of rules and hundreds of them. But in the end just all you got to do is think about you know you really want what you’re doing put on the front page of the paper tomorrow to be read by your parents by your by your spouse or your kids by your neighbors by your co-workers. And if you’re embarrassed about it know just forget about it. You’re all going to do well financially. You know the nice thing about it is you know you live in America in the year 2003. You don’t live in Bangladesh. You don’t live in America. How 1791 it was. You live and you live in a society which has a GDP of over 10 trillion and you just pick up the crops and you’re gonna do it right. You’ve all got to acknowledge it.

你知道的，Jerry Corrigan 就是 Jerry Corrigan，他会涨红了脸，大发雷霆，用一堆我都不好意思复述的脏话。但最终他会说：谢谢你第一时间打电话说明情况；我们会罚款，采取合适的措施，明天公司照常运转。然而 John Goodfriend——其实是个不错的人——却没有这样做，排名第二的 Tommy Strauss 也是如此。后来他们被罚款，并被逐出证券业，所罗门公司险些倒闭。全球八千名员工的前途都因那一个行为而陷入险境。所以，只需套用“报纸测试”。我对经理们说，我可以写出一千页的道德手册，制定成百上千条规则，但归根结底，你只要想想：明天这件事要是登上头版，被你的父母、配偶、孩子、邻居、同事看到，你会不会觉得尴尬？如果会，就别去做。大家在财务上都能活得很好。要知道，你们生活在 2003 年的美国，不是在孟加拉，也不是 1791 年的美国。你们身处一个 GDP 超过 10 万亿美元的社会，只需弯腰就能捡起丰收的果实，把事情做对就行，你们都必须认识到这一点。

It takes three qualities essentially to do well and extremely well I see in this country it takes intelligence it takes energy and it takes integrity. Now everybody in this room has the requisite intelligence you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. I mean it doesn’t take 180 IQ although I’m sure you all have those. But it it it takes it takes a reasonable intelligence. You’re getting a great education you’ve got the energy that’s why you’re you know you’ve shown up in school and it takes integrity and I say if you don’t have integrity you know it we don’t want to hire somebody that’s got the intelligence and energy if they don’t have integrity we’d rather hire somebody who’s dumb or lazy. If you don’t have Harry because they probably won’t ever get around to Sheedy’s or do something. One last thing in the world I want is somebody that likes and Mosier had intelligence and energy at SLM and he was the head of the government of trading. He had lots of intelligence a lots of energy and he went to jail. And he and he almost brought down the firm and integrity is absolutely an option. You know you need to be able to throw footballs 60 yards and you know you may not be able to run a hundred and ninety eight. You know you may not be able to see Freeport pointers from but you can choose where you stand on the scale. Can you were born wired one way or the other. There’s an absolute trust you make. And the heroes I’ve had in my life other than the people that I’ve felt stood out of that respect my number one hero was my dad.

在我看来，要在这个国家取得成功乃至巨大成功，本质上需要三种品质：智慧、精力和诚信。坐在这里的每个人都具备足够的智慧，否则你们不会到这儿来。并不需要 180 的智商，虽然我相信你们都不止此数，但需要合理的智力水平。你们受着优越的教育，拥有充沛的精力，这也是你们求学上进的原因；而诚信同样必不可少。我常说，如果没有诚信，其他再好也不要——比起雇佣一个聪明能干却没有诚信的人，我们宁可要一个愚笨或懒散的人，因为后者大概永远也不会去作弊或干坏事。我最不想见到的，就是像 Mosher 那样——他在所罗门是政府债券交易主管，既聪明又精力旺盛，最终却进了监狱，差点拖垮整家公司。诚信绝对是可以选择的。或许你天生投球就能掷出 60 码，也可能跑不出 9.8 秒的百米，也可能投不了三分球，但你可以选择自己在诚信这条刻度上的位置——这是你生来就能决定的完全自主选择。我一生中的英雄，除了那些我敬重的人之外，排在首位的就是我的父亲。

But I’ve had other heroes Tom Murphy and Graham people like that. And the reason I admire them was not because they were the smartest people in the world although they were smart and it wasn’t. It wasn’t because they made the most money. That meant nothing. It’s really because I felt they were the classiest people that I ever met my life. I mean I saw them behave over year after year after year in a way that I could write their story on the front page of the newspaper and even in an unfriendly tone I could not do anything that would embarrass them and at least they behaved extraordinarily well and having the right heroes you know is terribly important. You know you told me a 10 year old’s heroes are and I can give you a pretty good prediction about about how they’re going to turn out. You don’t choose your heroes very carefully because you’re going to you’re going to look like them at some point and you’re lucky if you’ve got if you’ve got the right I’ll give given aside and we’ll get on your questions. But it’s something you’re not a yet most of you but if you don’t you’re a parent you are the national hero of your child. I mean you I mean you know you’re this great big thing here. There’s two great big bags and there’s a little tiny child a pendant on it right. You are the national hero. And add anything you get to school subsequent or anything else.

但我也有其他崇拜的楷模，比如汤姆·墨菲（Tom Murphy）和格雷厄姆（Graham）这些人。我敬佩他们，并不是因为他们是世界上最聪明的人——虽然他们确实聪明；也不是因为他们赚了最多的钱——那对我毫无意义。我敬佩他们，是因为我觉得他们是我一生遇到过最有风度、最有品格的人。我年复一年地看到他们的言行，即使我把他们的故事用最不友善的语气写在报纸头版，也找不到任何能让他们难堪的地方；他们始终表现得极其得体。拥有正确的英雄非常重要。如果你告诉我一个 10 岁孩子崇拜谁，我大致就能预测他将来的样子。如果你不慎重选择英雄，终有一天你会变得像他们；若你选对了，那就非常幸运。我再插一句，然后回答你们的问题。你们大多数人还不是父母，但如果你们成为父母，你就是你孩子的全民偶像。想想看，你如此高大，而孩子那么依赖你——就像两个巨大的支柱撑着一个小小的孩子。你就是他们的民族英雄。以后无论是上学还是其他经历，都不可能像你的行为那样深刻地塑造他们。

They’re going to be shaped more by what they see in this behavior of yours for them than anything that will impact them later in our lives. And if they want you to be there you can destroy them of course and you know you’ve seen it many many times. But but actually if the parents are proper girls that their child is about 90 percent of the way home. And you know you’re lucky if you have parents like that and you can be that here’s when are you going to be something else and you’re shaping that person. It’s nice to learn accounting when you get in Nebraska. But but the behavior model that you take is incredibly important. Let’s talk about what’s on your mind now that you get to ask ask tough questions. More fun for me and they give me my business take a deep personal they’re going to be blogging gold. You pick it out and more from our business school is obviously in your mind. You or did you have to my meaning. Yeah. Oh that’s a very good question. You know how do you turn failure into a plus. And it’s true. When I was at the University in Nebraska one day I was reading the Daily Nebraskan and it said in Romans 300 or something at three o’clock there will be this panel of three professors here at the university and they’re going to award the Nathan Bowles scholarship. I don’t know. So you saw that around at the time said it will give you 500 hours to go to the graduate school of your choice of words change you know. But that was it.

他们将主要受到你为他们展现的行为模式的塑造，而不是未来生活中的其他影响因素。如果他们需要你在场，你当然也可能毁掉他们——你知道，这种情况你已见过太多次。然而，如果父母本身就是恰当的榜样，孩子的成功就已经完成了约 90%。如果你拥有那样的父母，你很幸运；而你也可以成为那样的榜样，去塑造另一个人。到内布拉斯加学会计固然不错，但你最终采取的行为模式才至关重要。现在，让我们谈谈你们关心的事——你们可以提出尖锐的问题，对我来说更有趣；这些问题能让我的商业经历和个人故事闪闪发光。你们随意挑选，显然商学院也在你们的脑海里。你是这个意思吗？对——那真是个好问题：如何把失败转化为优势。确实如此。当我在内布拉斯加大学读书时，有一天我在读《每日内布拉斯加人报》，上面写着：下午三点在 300 号罗马教室（大概是这个编号）将有三位教授组成的小组，他们要颁发内森·鲍尔斯奖学金。我当时并不知详情，只看到那则通知写着，奖学金将提供 500 美元，用于攻读你所选择的任何研究生院学位。事情就是这么简单。

So I read this and I went there to this room at three o’clock that day or whatever it was I walked into the room and there were the professors and I was the only student that showed up. We got to. I mean they were stuck. They kept waiting and looking at why should we worry more candidates. But there no one came in. So I won five hundred dollars by default. And now those are usually my biggest triumphs when nobody shows up. And so here I was I had five hundred dollars to go toward any. It wasn’t it wasn’t altimeters any any graduate school for a master’s degree. So I applied to Harvard. My dad went to a two and I surely heard from Harvard and they said voters Chicago and he is for running that who interviews applicants from the Midwest. So he got on the train as that’s what you did in those days and I spent ten hours on the Burlington going to Chicago. I transferred to another level an urban train to go up to this country day school. This fall it was the headmaster and he was the big interviewer for Harvard. And I got there and after about 10 hours he said I or think about something else. You know he come back later on. I was 19 at the time and I looked about 12 you know and I I actually about eight as was not a great combination but so he said forget it. So I spent in an urban train back to Chicago to attend are very very good all the time.

于是我读到这条消息，当天下午三点左右我便去了那间教室。我走进去，只见几位教授坐在那里，而我竟是唯一到场的学生。他们一时愣住了，只能继续等，四处张望，心想还要不要担心其他候选人，可最后没有人再进来。于是我不费吹灰之力赢得了那五百美元。事实上，当没人出现时，这往往就是我最大的胜利。就这样，我手里有了五百美元，可以用于任何硕士项目——没有任何限制。于是我申请了哈佛。我父亲也曾在那里读书。不久，哈佛回信说，让我去芝加哥见一位负责面试中西部申请者的先生。那时只能这么做，我上了火车，在伯灵顿线上坐了十个小时到芝加哥。随后又换乘市郊列车，前往一所乡村走读学校。那年秋天，那位校长正是哈佛的重要面试官。我抵达后，大约十分钟他就说我应该考虑别的学校，日后再来。当时我十九岁，看起来像十二岁，甚至像八岁，这可不是理想组合，于是他说算了吧。于是我又坐上市郊列车返回芝加哥，整个折腾过程真是哭笑不得。

You know I told my parents you know I had embarrassing but it was it was the luckiest thing ever happened to me because if I’d gone to Harvard I would have gone to a two year business school. I instead applied to Columbia where I could graduate one year and get a master’s degree. Luckily that by the accident of it and being in a Rascon National Guard which did not get cold over the Korean War I missed going in the Korean War. I I got to meet Ben Graham and I had an enormous effect on me subsequently and I probably got my wife that way because she was going to Northwestern. And I was able to put on sort of a full court press because I got out in one year and otherwise. Q Did you miss the other guy. I mean I got her before the competition showed up. And so it worked out wonderfully. It couldn’t have worked out better. And that’s been that’s been my life basically. I mean the things you know you will get some disappointments. But the future is what counts at the front if I knew every decision I was going to make was not be perfect. It would be it must be like playing golf and knowing you’re going to hit a hole in one on every hole. You wouldn’t play golf every time you got out of key you took a swing of the ball ended up in the hole. Be fun for a few days you can get on TV. But if it does the game will not be any fun. So it’s failure and I wouldn’t even consider failures. But there were mistakes you you call them.

我把这件事告诉了父母，虽说有点尴尬，但这是我遇到过最大的幸运。若当初去了哈佛，我得念两年的商学院；而我改报了哥伦比亚，只用一年便能拿到硕士学位。阴差阳错，加上我在内布拉斯加国民警卫队服役而未被召往朝鲜战场，我躲过了朝鲜战争。我也因此得以结识本·格雷厄姆，这对我的影响深远；多半也是因此，我才娶到了正在西北大学就读的妻子。因为一年就毕业，我得以倾尽全力追求她——在竞争对手出现前就成功了。一切都进展得无比顺利，简直不可能更好。这大体就是我的人生。你总会遭遇一些失望，但真正重要的是未来。如果我知道自己做的每个决定都不会出错，那就像打高尔夫时每一杆都是一杆进洞：几天里也许很有趣，还能上电视，但比赛本身就失去乐趣了。所以所谓“失败”——我甚至不认为那是失败，只能说是犯了错误。

They’re part of the game and in the end you know you go out and we’ve made plenty of mistakes in business we’ll make more and then you know that Babe Ruth and you know for a long time subsequently got eclipsed by a few votes but hey hold the record for strikeouts. Also the old record for all Muslims eyes Bay baseball where until the modern era came along. So this is part of the game you take big swings you know you. In May. You may. You’re going to miss sometimes. But the you know the Harvard thing you get a kick out of this. Maybe I might be back to the 25th anniversary of this class to talk to them. And I want it back. It was kind of embarrassing because this was the 25th reunion and the class was talking about the next 25 years to these alumni that were back after 25 years. And my job was to talk about the next 20 years. Your financial future in the next 25 years this was it was in the mid 70s and right before me on the program. Masters and Johnson we’re talking next to me five years of their sex lives. So nobody stayed around for high talk but that night that night at the Ivy League they felt it was part of their class. And I said you know we’re big enough to make admit when we make mistakes around here and we turn this guy down through it back to the water. And so now we’d like to make him an honorary member of the class. So they did it and they voted and everybody voted for it.

失败是比赛的一部分。最终你走上前台，我们在商业上犯过很多错误，将来还会再犯。你知道贝比·鲁斯——虽然后来他的一些纪录被人以微弱优势打破，但他仍保持着三振出局的纪录，并在现代棒球出现前保持着多项旧纪录。这就是比赛的本质：你会大力挥棒，也会偶尔落空。不过，说到那件哈佛的事，你也许会觉得有趣。后来我可能回到那一届毕业二十五周年的聚会并向他们演讲，那场面有些尴尬，因为那是二十五周年同学会，返校的校友正在讨论未来二十五年，而我的任务是谈未来二十五年的财务前景。那是七十年代中期，在我之前的节目里，马斯特斯和约翰逊讨论他们未来五年的性生活，所以几乎没人留下来听我的演讲。但那天晚上，在常春藤联谊会上，他们认为我本应属于他们的班级。我说，我们要有足够的胸怀承认当年拒绝我是个错误，现在想纠正，于是他们提议让我成为该班的名誉成员，并投票表决，结果全票通过。

And I stood up as I recited the story that I told you and I told him you and I said at the time I was kind of philosophical about this. I was young and he migration weren’t that good or something and so I took the rejection kind of well but I said now that I’ve met the people the guy didn’t have some really sore OK who’s next. Yeah. You have said I’ll repeat it here. Yeah well really I only want the Minister to say one thing at my funeral if he gets up there and play a few little him that there is no place like Nebraska. I’d be great. I just want to say up prayer and say My God he was old I’ll settle for crude as the Amish said Birchers my creation. So I would like people to the shedid people will regard that. Well that’s what counts. I mean that’s my painting and. And I hope that people will get been running for almost 38 years but 30 years exactly and he’s only got another 30 or 40 to go. And I hope that that we have done some things differently than other corporations. We operate on a different model. And I hope two things about it actually I hope that the people will realize that that model works and why it works and so on. Because it is it does conflict with certain management theory over the years. And secondly the important thing is that it last well beyond me. I was not a Wal-Mart six months ago and talked to their management group and it was I had a great time. What is really astounding. I voted for Wal-Mart as the most admired company in the country last year.

于是我站起来，重复了刚才告诉你们的那个故事。我跟他说，当年我对此还是比较豁达的；那时我还年轻，或许“迁移能力”之类的也不够好，所以对被拒绝看得较开。但我说，现在我见过那些人之后，那个拒绝我的家伙其实并没有多可恶。好吧，下一位？是的，你刚才提到过的，我在这里再重复一遍。嗯，其实我只希望牧师在我葬礼上说一句话：唱几句小赞歌，然后说“世界上没有地方能比得上内布拉斯加”。那就太好了。我只想他做个祷告，说：“天哪，他真老。”我乐于接受朴素的评价，正如阿米什人所说的：“伯克希尔是我的作品。”所以我希望人们——“谢迪德”人（可能是一处口误）——能认可这点。这才是关键，这就是我的“画作”。我希望人们明白，本（伯克希尔）已经运营了近 38 年，准确说是 30 年，而他（伯克希尔）还将继续 30 或 40 年。我也希望我们确实做了一些与其他公司不同的事，我们按一种不同的模式运作。我对这件事有两个愿望：第一，希望人们认识到这种模式行得通，并理解它为何行得通，因为多年来它确实与某些管理理论相冲突；第二，更重要的是，希望这种模式能在我之后长久延续。大约六个月前，我在沃尔玛，与他们的管理团队交流，玩得很开心。真正令人惊讶的是，我去年把沃尔玛投票选为全国最受钦佩的公司。

That was that’s where my vote went it was astounding what Sam Walton built starting in Bentonville Arkansas with a pickup truck taking on J.C. Penney a Kmart and Sears and all of these people with no money no real estate no preference vendors no credit card list anything he just took them on. And of course he just ran right away from them. But the really impressive thing about Wal-Mart is that Sam died about 11 years ago and that there had been no momentum lost. I mean what he is still doing that nobody else is going to build it like Sam. But David last first at least got. Now as the Zingo they have kept that company with its special culture going at full steam ever since. And that that’s really what I hope happens with Berkshire and I’ve tried to think about ways to make that happen. But the real test will be if 10 or 20 years after I’d die that the special culture that I think is part of Berkshire is not only just as strong as ever but even stronger. We have a situation in Berkshire where in 38 years we got all kinds of CEOs there and all kinds of businesses for forum and Omahaw. We have never had one CEO ever leave us period. They go someplace else. I mean it. I don’t know that there’s any because I’ve got the country. So it’s it’s been a and we’ve never issued a stock option. You know you know you read in the papers that you’ve got half stock options that attract quality of all that sort of thing.

那就是我投出的那一票。令人惊叹的是，山姆·沃尔顿在阿肯色州本顿维尔，仅凭一辆皮卡，就向 J.C. Penney、Kmart、Sears 等巨头发起挑战——没有资金、没有地产、没有优先供应商、没有信用卡客户名单，什么都没有，他就是硬拼，结果把他们远远甩在身后。但沃尔玛真正令人佩服的是，山姆在大约 11 年前去世后，公司丝毫没有失去动力；他当年所做的事，如今无人能够像山姆那样再造。戴维·格拉斯（以及后来的道格·麦克米伦）让这家公司及其独特文化始终全速前进。这正是我希望伯克希尔能够做到的，我也一直在思考如何实现。但真正的考验是：在我去世 10 年、20 年之后，我认为属于伯克希尔的那种特殊文化不仅依旧强大，而且更加稳固。伯克希尔 38 年来汇聚了形形色色的 CEO 与各类业务，却从未有任何一位 CEO 离开我们另投他处；恐怕全国都难找第二家能做到这一点。此外，我们从未发放过一股期权——报纸里那些“必须靠期权才能吸引人才”的说法，在我们这里根本不存在。

We never had we never had to share them. And and and in the end I don’t know how many dozens of managers we’re talking about. But no one ever has ever left for another job and someone been offered way more money. Ajeet Jane who runs our reinsurance operation probably could have increased his income ten times tenfold. He’s already making any new orleans but but tenfold. But he didn’t want to leave. And that is the culture that I hope we can maintain and that’s what I’d really like to be if I’ve done anything to contribute to that continuing after I die that would never be worth it. I actually kind to keep managing Bircher after I die. You have to understand that I have given all the matters we keyboards you know I got the dark room. We’re going to go and do it. I’ll be there this is be it at the Russ Verney Park worked 103 in Berkshire and she’s she’s sort of our examples. And then she then she took off from work and she died the next year. So very dangerous to do early is that yep. I myself be calling on these people ok. On personal finance how do I have Wolmar in your duties. Oh I hope we’ve got a of there’s about a foundation. Eventually it will have everything. I mean basically everything I’ve made will go back to society. America has been on it for me and I know it as well. You go out. I have I got about an eight page letter that the trustees have already seen. It’s a very few trustees.

我们从来没有——真的从来没有——必须给他们分什么（期权）。归根结底，我也说不清究竟涉及多少位经理，几十位总是有的。但没有一个人因为另外的工作机会而离开，即便有人得到了高出许多的薪酬邀约。负责我们再保险业务的 Ajit Jain 原本可以把收入提高十倍；他现在收入已经不菲，但再翻十倍也完全可能，可他还是不想离开。这正是我希望维系下去的文化；如果我做过的任何事情能让这种文化在我去世后继续延续，那就再值得不过了。实际上，我倒有点想“死后继续管理”伯克希尔。你得明白，我已经把所有事务都交代给管理层——文件都锁在暗室里了，我们会按部就班去做。我会“在场”的——就像伯克希尔当年那位干到 103 岁的罗斯·布鲁姆金老太太，她就是我们的典范之一。她退休后第二年便辞世，所以太早“退场”实在危险，对吧？我自己也会继续联络这些人。至于个人财富安排，我把它类似“沃尔玛职责”那样处理：我们有一个基金会，最终它会掌管一切——基本上，我赚到的所有财富都会回馈社会。美国成就了我，我深知这一点。我留下了大约八页纸的信，受托人已经看过了；受托人很少，但足够承担这项使命。

I don’t believe in large groups of people making decisions it gets to be you know sort of descends to the lowest common denominator so there’s only four maybe five or six trustees interestingly enough not just by accident but I picked the people I trusted the most in terms of both their intelligence but also their quality to run it after I met people I feel the surest of a significant majority will be women it will be a women woman controlled Foundation and probably the largest foundation in the world at that time but with a very small number of managers trustees. I have in my letter I tell them that I’m not going to give them any specific instructions as to what to do with the money. I tell them that their judgment above ground will be better than my judgment six feet underground so that in the end I want them I want them to do a couple of things. I want to attack really big important causes. I don’t want them to give a million dollars a year or a billion dollars there and everybody that you know that asks that they know what sort of things. I don’t want to doing things with an eyedropper. I wanted to swing take very big swings and then I want to measure what they’re doing by the importance of what they’re doing as contrasted to the natural funding constituency for that. Taking a health field. I mean you have the National Institute of Health spending billions and billions that are yet all kinds of money going into medical research. It’s crazy in my view for the Buffett Foundation to be engaged in medical research. It’s not that the subjects are isn’t important.

我不相信由庞大群体来做决策——那样往往会滑向“最低共同点”。因此受托人只设四位，也许五六位。这绝非偶然，我挑选的都是我最信任的人，不仅因为他们的智慧，更因为他们的品格。我与他们接触后确信，其中绝大多数将是女性——这将是一家由女性主导的基金会，并且在当时或许是全球最大，但管理层极为精简。我在信中告诉他们，我不会给出任何具体花钱指令；我说，他们在地面上的判断要比我“六英尺下”的判断更好。最终，我要他们做两件事：第一，聚焦真正重大且重要的议题；第二，不要一年捐个一百万、哪里都撒点钱、对每个来求助的人都应付一点。我不要“滴管式”慈善，而是要大手笔出击。然后要以所做事项的重要性，去衡量其相对于“天然资助群体”的位置。以医学领域为例，美国国立卫生研究院每年投入数百亿美元，医学研究已资金充沛，因此让巴菲特基金会再投医学研究在我看来毫无意义，并非研究课题不重要，而是资金来源已有庞大基础。

There’s already a huge funding constituency. It will be crazy for the money to go to Harvard or something sort it isn’t that it isn’t a fine educational institution but you’ve got all these people that gave money to Harvard and they’ve got a ritual on IBase and all of that sort of thing. So I want the combination of a terribly important program and the lack of an actual funding constituency. Well where do you find it you find out what unpopular causes are quite a degree Rockefeller felt somewhat the same way. It’s interesting. He was the first major patron of any sort of black colleges in the United States. And if you think about it black colleges had no funding decisions. I mean they’re they’re all on my didn’t have any money. Basically if you go back 75 or 100 years. So there wasn’t any money coming in. People didn’t know they didn’t go great businesses and then and then leave tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to the institution. And it was it was self-perpetuating. And so Rockefeller stepped in and he he took a group of black colleges and funded them in a very very big way. And I admire that kind of decision and obviously would otherwise not think what happened. And that’s why I hope the trustees of the nation do. I was with Bill Gates last week with and I consider his foundation. He and Melinda together because they’re equal partners in it. I consider their foundation to be the most logical big foundation in the world. They’re giving away about a billion dollars a year.

对于那些已有庞大资金支持的领域，再把钱投给哈佛之类的机构就太荒唐了——并非哈佛不好，而是它已有无数捐款、仪式和传统。我要寻找的是：议题极其重要，但却缺乏自然资金来源的领域。要找到它，就得去看看哪些议题“不讨喜”。洛克菲勒对此颇有同感——他是美国最早大规模资助黑人大学的慈善家。想想看，那些黑人大学当时几乎没有资助来源：七八十年前，它们既没钱，也没人会把几千万、上亿美元留给这些院校，于是恶性循环下去。洛克菲勒介入后，集中大笔资金支持了一批黑人大学，我十分钦佩这种决定，因为若没有他的举动，很多事情根本不会发生。这正是我希望受托人们去做的。上周我与比尔·盖茨见面，我认为他和梅琳达共同创立的基金会是当今最具逻辑的大型基金会之一——他们每年捐出约十亿美元。

Now Bill said and Melinda said to themselves how do we say the most lives per dollar spam in the world. And they decided that in certain major medical areas that what was being done abroad in many countries was zilch in terms of these things that were easily preventable by vaccines or various other things. And they decided they could save huge numbers of lives per billion dollars spent but they’d be spending it on places like India and all Africa where they would get no credit and save them no building put her name no nothing that was their metric. And as that Bill sold metric I mean he doesn’t want to talk about go to him was Proposition to stick his name on something that over 50 million dollars that doesn’t interest him at all. He is a totally rational and he pours himself into it. He has educated himself on medicine and medicine outside the United States in a way that I’ve never seen anybody and I’ve got news with this you should write down on May 2nd on public broadcasting there will be a program where Bill with Bill Moyers Bill Moyers is interviewing him and Bill explains his philanthropic thinking and it I went there. It was taped at Columbia University and back in and. It’s actually more about the that that is going to be a great program. They took about an hour and 20 minutes it’s going to get edited down to 56 or 58 minutes. But you will hear as you’ll hear is Colgin an argument for rational philanthropy on that program as you’ll ever hear in your life.

比尔和梅琳达问自己：怎样才能用每一美元拯救最多的生命？他们发现，在一些主要医学领域，许多国家几乎没有开展对可通过疫苗或其他简单手段预防的疾病的工作。于是他们决定，每花十亿美元就能挽救大量生命，但这些钱将投入到印度、整个非洲等地——在那里他们得不到任何赞誉，没有以他们命名的大楼，什么都没有；这就是他们的衡量标准。而比尔对此的态度完全一致——如果有人提议用五千万美元给他冠名，他毫无兴趣。他极其理性，全身心投入其中，并自学了我前所未见的国际医学知识。我有个消息：请记下 5 月 2 日公共电视台将播出一档节目，由比尔·莫耶斯采访比尔·盖茨，盖茨将在节目中阐述他的慈善理念。我去现场了，地点在哥伦比亚大学，节目原长约一小时二十分钟，将剪辑至五十六至五十八分钟。你将听到一场关于“理性慈善”的精彩论述，堪称此生难得一闻。

So I it’s interesting that program came about because about two years ago I asked Bill a question had a group get together something akin to us you asked him I asked him to talk about the evolution of his philanthropic thinking. And there were a group of about 60 who was there and he talked to us. And I mean it was a fabulous start. I just said you know you got to get that out in the public domain somehow. So. So this thing with bone wires does that if I died tonight. All my Berkshire shares which are ninety nine percent of my network plus go to my wife she dies for Schreurs over me and then it all goes without the foundation and it will then be active on a very big big scale. And those are the guidelines. And who knows what those problems will be. I mean it will probably in my welcome in civil rights in the early 60s. I mean the civil rights organizations were not being funded by anybody and the money wasn’t the big problem but it was a problem in the civil rights arena. And there was no natural funding constituency for that. It was an important very important issue but it was an unpopular issue that he respects and it seems to me that’s where the money should go particularly to have on our big scale where he can really do something pens why die. But but you know 10 or 50 years from now the foundation to really I mean he could have a lot of money. And so they could do things that nobody else could it happen and it will be what people want to do. That’s the nature of it was what he wanted to do it already being done.

那档节目的起因很有意思：大约两年前，我在一次与比尔类似今天这种聚会中，请他谈谈自己慈善理念的发展历程，现场约六十人。他的分享精彩极了，我当时就说：这必须公开传播出去。于是就有了这次节目。至于骨干原则：如果我今晚去世，我全部伯克希尔股票——占我净资产的 99% 以上——将先归我妻子；若她先我而去，再全部进入基金会，届时基金会将以极大规模运作。指导方针就是如此。至于届时要解决哪些问题，谁也难料。回想 60 年代初期，民权运动机构几乎得不到任何资助——资金虽非唯一阻碍，却是关键问题，而且缺乏天然的资助群体。那是一件既重要又“不讨喜”的事，我认为大笔资金就应投向这种领域，在我们的大规模下才能真正有所作为。或许 10 年、50 年后，这个基金会将拥有巨额资金，能够做别人做不了的事——那就是它的本质：去做紧迫但无人承担的任务。

Interesting the contrast between business and philanthropy is interested in business I swing at IJI pages. I stand at the plate and I like pitches one inch above my table right in the center of the plate. I can wait and wait and wait because there’s no called strikes. As long as on my shoulder nobody’s going to strike. If the pitcher throws me General Motors at 36 IBM at 82 Microsoft at 25 and I know swing it’s not a strike. It’s not a head either but it’s not a strike only why swing is it a strike so I wait for easy patience I wait for things I understand your factory in my sweet spot. Philanthropy is just the opposite. You’re looking at the toughest problems the world faces and there are intractable. To some extent I mean these are tough tough problems and they have resisted the utilization of money over the years. And that’s what makes them tough problems. I mean the problems you solve them are the humans are the problems you can’t solve with money. So they are very tough problem one. One thing I’ve got involved in just a little bit recently is something the sand on this heading. Senator the former senator called the Nuclear Threat Initiative added. Essentially I say not who is who is as well-informed as anybody in the world on this subject can articulate and everything is working on a problem of the nuclear materials and hord nuclear talent that exists around the world that might become available to terrorists or to governments to impose on the rest of the society.

有趣的是，商业与慈善之间形成了鲜明对比。在商业领域，我只挥击那些“唾手可得的好球”。我站在击球区，喜欢那种刚好在本垒板中央、离球棒一英寸高的球。我可以耐心等待，因为投资中没有“被三振”这一说——只要我不轻易出棒，就不会被判出局。如果投手把通用汽车 36 美元、IBM 82 美元、微软 25 美元的球投过来，而我不挥棒，这既不是好球，也不会出局；只有球进入好球带，我才会挥击。因此我耐心等待那些我理解、且完全落在我的“甜蜜区”的机会。慈善恰恰相反——要直面世界上最棘手的问题，这些问题某种程度上几乎无解：它们长期抵御金钱的作用，这正是其难点所在。换句话说，金钱能解决的就不是难题；真正的难题是那些金钱解决不了的人性问题。这些问题确实非常艰巨。我最近稍微参与的一件事，是前参议员萨姆·纳恩倡议的“核威胁倡议”（Nuclear Threat Initiative）。萨姆在该领域见识堪称全球一流，他致力于解决全球散落的核材料及核技术人才可能落入恐怖分子或某些政府之手、从而危害社会的问题。

And there are vast amounts of uranium and lesser amounts of plutonium and there’s a lot of unemployed Russian scientists and so on. So this is something that Ted Turner actually set up a couple years ago and got Sam to handle. And because AOL Time Warner stock which was you’d be used or funded from Ted. One now on price. They’re short of money. So that’s something I’m involved in. And you know it’s not something that has popular appeal. You can’t raise Gant’s and as I’ve hit hundreds of thousands of people that it was not. But but that’s the kind of thing that I think you know the foundation should be doing.

世界各地确实存在大量铀，以及相对较少的钚，还有许多失业的俄罗斯核科学家。这项倡议是泰德·特纳几年前发起并委托萨姆负责的。由于本应提供资金支持的 AOL–时代华纳股票大幅下跌，他们现在资金紧张，所以我也参与进来。你知道，这种事情并不讨大众喜欢；你无法像筹办慈善舞会那样轻松筹钱，也不会有几十万人为此欢呼。但我认为，这恰恰是基金会该做的事情。

Yeah. Yeah the question is with the government considering eliminating the double taxation on dividends. Would that change your attitude at Berkshire geared toward paying dividends and what sort of decision making framework do we have about whether we pay dividends or not. Berkshire I took over in 1965 and we paid ten cents a share one year. In the late 60s. I can’t remember if I’d blocked it out on my resume the or something because that was the only day that we paid. The determination is very simple. As is can we retain a dollar or a billion dollars or whatever the amount of earnings and have that dollar become worth more than a dollar in immediate present value. Now even though he may not get used for a few years or something and others are weak. If that dollar worth more than a dollar if kept doing that is forgetting about taxes entirely.

是的，问题是：如果政府考虑取消股息的双重征税，这会不会改变伯克希尔的分红态度？我们如何决定是否派息？我在 1965 年接手伯克希尔，我们只在 60 年代后期某一年发过一次股息，每股 0.10 美元。我甚至记不清是否在简历里把那次派息“抹掉”了——因为那是唯一一次。我们的判断极其简单：如果我们留存的一美元、十亿美元或任何数额的利润，其即时现值能够超过一美元——即便这笔钱几年内用不上——我们就选择留存，而完全不考虑税收因素。

Let’s assume the total tax free society in terms of dividends and the answer to that so far has been yes we have kept the dollars that we’ve earned and we have created more than a dollar of market value for every dollar we retained. And as long as we can do that it’s simply to pay out a dollar even if it’s not taxed and put it into my pocket. It’s still only worth a dollar if I can create more than a dollars worth of value in the stock. So we have done that for a lot of years. Doesn’t mean we can do it forever but we’ve done it for a lot of years and that is the test and you will find in the back of the Berkshire Hathaway annual report which will be glad to send any of you on the Internet. Also what you’ll find in the back of the back of Berkshire report something that isn’t in any other report that I know of is something called the economic principles of Berkshire Hathaway that’s been in the report every year now for at least 20 years. And those principles don’t change. That’s why there are principles now and that’s why I’m willing to lay them out. I mean if if I act in conflict with those principles I expect the owners to call me out. But I look at the investors in Berkshire as my partner. Now I’m the managing partner. They can’t because I was somewhat shocked they can’t do much. Ah so they ought to know what the gain is when they if they join us. And that doesn’t mean everybody wants to join us but they want to know what the rules are just as if you and I were starting a partnership.

假设股息完全免税，迄今为止的答案仍然是肯定的：我们保留了赚到的每一美元，并且为每一美元留存收益创造了超过一美元的市值。只要我们还能做到这一点，把不征税的一美元分到我口袋里仍然只值一美元；如果我能让这美元在股票中变成超过一美元的价值，我们就应该继续留存。多年来我们一直如此，这并不意味着永远能够做到，但这始终是我们的衡量标准。你可以在伯克希尔哈撒韦年报的末尾看到这些内容，我们也乐意在网上发送给任何人。此外，年报附录里还有一个我所知其他公司都没有的文件——《伯克希尔哈撒韦的经济原则》，至少二十年来年年刊载。这些原则不会变，这就是它们被称为原则的原因，也是我愿意公开它们的缘故。如果我背离这些原则，我希望股东指出来。我把伯克希尔的投资者视作合伙人，而我是管理合伙人；他们事实上做不了太多事，所以在加入之前就应当了解收益如何。并不是人人都想加入，但他们得知道规则——就像你我一起创立合伙企业时一样。

I was going around it you’d want to know you know how we were going to conduct business and what our costs were and what our time horizon was would be ever so what would I make distributions all that kind of thing. So that those principles cover at this point you raise I don’t forget what’s the third or fourth quarter something like that. But it’s explained there and I want people to understand our owners understand it. I mean I look at every owner when I write my annual letter to shareholders which takes me an ungodly amount of time. Are you miserable. But nevertheless it’s important because it is the one time of year I’m talking to my partners and when I started out actually mentally put dear to us and Birdie because those are my sisters and they have all our money and Bircher they’re smart but they’re not financial types I mean they’re spending their time on Appert and I essentially want to be talking to them as bright people who don’t know a lot of financial jargon necessarily but they’re all but are interested enough to read a lot because they’ve got all that money. So I don’t have to worry about keeping a shortening I got it if I if I’m talking about their money I’d probably get their interest. And I take that off of the very end and then I’ll take up your doors and Burgin with the shareholders of Berkshire. But I want to tell them exactly what they’re in. I want it to be just as if our roles were reversed.

如果我们要合伙，你肯定想知道我们将如何经营、成本结构如何、时间跨度多长、何时分配收益等等。你提出的问题，年报中的那些经济原则早已涵盖——我记不清放在第三还是第四部分，但里面解释得很清楚。我希望所有持有人都能理解。我写年度致股东信要花掉我大量时间，你们也许读得很痛苦，但这很重要——一年中只有这一次我在和合伙人对话。最初我在脑海里其实是写给 Doris 和 Bertie 的——她们是我姐妹，全部身家都投在伯克希尔。她们聪明，却不是金融人士，把时间花在其他兴趣上。我想用她们能懂的方式与她们交谈：把她们当作聪明、但不懂金融术语、却因为钱在这里而愿意认真阅读的人。这样我就不必担心文辞是否简短；只要谈到她们的钱，她们自然会关注。写完后，我把信中的“Doris 和 Bertie”改成“伯克希尔股东”。我想让他们确切知道自己拥有什么，好像我们角色互换一样。

As always the test if Doris and Bernie were running your place and I was living in Carmel California like Birdie is what would I want to hear from them. The managers at one of the things I want to hear is just exactly the question that you asked you know what is what is your attitude about distributing money from the from the company because I get to make that decision along with the board of directors and they don’t. And so management’s withhold money that really belongs to their owners because they like building the kingdom. Some of them you know do. Out of fear. I think I’m doing it for a rational reason and I want to explain that reason I sell a lot of testimony on that too because I think I should be tested. And it’s a it’s a very important relationship that really has deteriorated over the years in my view between management and owners. I mean you’ve seen in the last 10 years a slippage in my view of the behavior of American CEOs on all kinds of exceptions but it’s very interesting because there are culture and also there’s a few. And they’ve gotten a lot of publicity lately. But nevertheless they have behaved as most humans do they sort of picked up the behavior of those around them. So I’d hate to hang out with people better than you are. I mean you know if you hang out with people better than you are you’ll become better yourself. Everybody behaved better those around my wife. I mean even including me starting from a low base. But the she just had an effect on people and other people pointed out.

正如以往的检验，如果 Doris 和 Bernie 来管理你的公司，而我像 Birdie 一样住在加州卡梅尔，我希望从他们那里得到什么信息？我最想听到的，就是你刚才提的那个问题：你们如何看待向公司股东分配资金？因为这个决定由我和董事会来做，而管理层做不了。有些管理层会扣留本应属于股东的钱，只因为他们喜欢“扩张王国”；有些则是出于恐惧。我自认为这样做是有理性原因的，并且乐于说明理由，也愿接受质疑。在我看来，管理层与所有者之间这一重要关系多年来的确恶化了。过去十年，美国 CEO 的行为水准出现下滑（虽然也有例外），文化因素和个别人的影响都在其中发挥作用，这些人近来屡屡见诸报端。然而，他们和大多数人一样，会模仿身边人的行为。所以，最好与比你优秀的人来往；与优秀者同行，你自己也会变得更好。所有人在我妻子身边时表现都会更好——包括我自己，虽然起点很低——她对人有种积极影响，旁人也能看出来。

I mean when I was in the National Guard and we were going cap and about an hour I was reading comic books you know pretty every measuring probably goes with the language you know every every other word go to some form of profanity. It just gets sick. Well what happened to American CEOs in the 90s is that they they the behavior the situational ethics sort of cause behavioral norms there’s the sink I say is a little like Mae West described her career. She said I was so white but I Drifted an American management drifted to quite a degree during that during that period. I think it’s very important. You know what that relationship is. People have given you their money at Berkshire Hathaway or any other company. And and I’m I’m I’m a I’m a trustee for the net effect. And then the question is they ought to see if I control the place they ought to know the yardsticks. So if you do go to our Web site go to the back of the report or something like anomic constables and we try to discuss everything is important. And I tell them I’m going to vote them in every year so that they can you know they can hold me accountable. Yeah. Yeah. And the question is about the personal qualities we look for in the executives we’ve placed in our various companies. The first thing is we don’t usually buy something. I mean they come with we don’t have anybody to place. So I have a problem occasionally if somebody dies or to replace a CEO. But most of our CEOs came with a deal. Clayton Homes which were buying comes with Kevin quite right. We will put an overhang there.

我在国民警卫队时，我们要去野营，一小时后我还在看漫画书，几乎每句话都夹杂着脏话，让人难受。90 年代的美国 CEO 发生了什么？情境伦理让他们的行为标准下沉；用梅·韦斯特描述自己演艺生涯的话来说：“我起初那么清白，但后来逐渐滑落。” 那段时间里，美国管理层的确滑落不少。我认为，理解这种关系非常重要：人们把钱交给伯克希尔或其他公司，而我是这笔钱的受托人。既然我掌控公司，他们就该知道衡量标准。因此，如果你访问我们的网站，翻到年报最后那部分《经济原则》，我们努力把所有重要事项都讲清楚。我告诉股东，我每年都会让他们投票，以便对我进行问责。是的，你问的是我们在各子公司选择高管时看重哪些个人品质。首先，我们通常是收购公司，高管随公司而来，并没有多余职位去安插人选。只有当某位 CEO 去世或需要更换时，我才会偶尔遇到难题。但我们的大多数 CEO 都是随交易而来的。例如我们正收购的 Clayton Homes，就带着 Kevin 一起加入，我们不会再额外设置一层管理结构。

It will run a place just as before. But in terms of the personal blog. One when a seller comes to me with a business whether it’s Klayton or any of the others I Friedman and borsch Heim’s Mrs. B at Nebraska Furniture remarked when they come to me the first question I have to ask myself because I’m counting on them to run the vice. I have to decide what do they love the money or do they love the business. There’s nothing wrong with liking money. I know like money. But but they love the business. They can have a passion for it because I give them a whole lot of money and a lot of money and they all of the business no matter what they tell me. Six months from now they’ll be gone. I mean that is all. Why am I getting up to 7 in the morning is like a lot of money on it. I mean it it just it won’t work. So they have to love the business. I mean I want people with passion Boulez’s. I used to say that I had a one line employment for one question employment for the question was Are you a fanatic. You know if you answer yes you got the job. I was a fanatic about their business. You know I mean you are people that love teaching. If if if you’re in the classroom. You don’t have a passion for it. It doesn’t work very well. So right now they’ve got the passion and our managers do. But not everybody in the financial operators.

它会像以前一样运营下去。但就个人层面而言，当一个卖家带着一个生意—无论是 Klayton 还是其他任何公司—来到我面前时，我首先要问自己一个问题，因为我指望他们经营这家公司。我要判断，他们是热爱金钱，还是热爱这门生意？喜欢钱没有错，我自己也喜欢钱。但如果他们是真的热爱这门生意，就会对它充满激情。哪怕我给他们很多钱，不管他们当时怎么跟我说，半年后他们也可能离开。想想看：如果他们只是为了钱，为什么要早上七点起床？他们当时不会为了那点钱起那么早。只有真正热爱这门生意的人才能坚持下来。我曾说过，我招聘时只有一个问题：你是个狂热者吗？如果你回答“是”，你就得到了这份工作。我过去对自己做的生意就是狂热者的状态。就像热爱教学的人，如果你在课堂上对教学没有激情，是做不好的。目前我们的管理层都是对业务充满激情的，但并非所有金融操盘手都是如此。

We never bought a business from an LBO operator or a financial operator. So they don’t give a damn. I mean all they want to do is make sure your share clears and they’re gone. And it isn’t going to work if we try to buy from them. So we buy from these people who love their businesses and and then it really my job is just to make sure that I don’t mess it up and create conditions that cause it to call it loving it for some reason because they can’t inlining only I can only I can sit up and they care about being treated fairly on compensation. They all measured against everybody else. They’re not a lawyer they’re negotiating with me. I don’t have a compensation arrangement with any of these managers. You can’t be putting one paragraph. And I go to other companies where they have a lawyer on it and there’s 80 pages on it. It tells what happens John they get paid a severance or they end up going to jail. You know I I just I will deal with somebody that thinks that way. And that’s why there’s a self selection process in terms of who comes. There’s this invisible filter out there that causes the clients of the world the Alula usable world the framers of the world of Mrs. Beatha world to come to us. Well I made a deal to be in 1983 Mississippi had another offer from somebody else that was on Mohajir and she just said I don’t care who don’t own 20 percent of the company that she had four children aged 20 percent.

我们从未从杠杆收购（LBO）或纯金融操盘者手中买过生意，因为他们根本不在乎。对他们来说，只要股权清算了，他们就撤了。若我们试图从这样的人手里买公司，根本行不通。因此我们只从那些热爱自己公司的人那里买下企业，然后我的工作就是确保不把事情搞砸，不制造让他们因“热爱”而被束缚的条件。他们关心的是报酬是否公平，而不是合同里每一句每一段。我不会和任何这些经理签订复杂的薪酬协议；若放在别的公司，律师会写 80 页的合同，里面会写明各种离职补偿、违约责任乃至入狱条款之类的内容。我无法与那种心态打交道，这也就形成了一个“无形过滤器”：那些普通客户、制造商、零售商和 Mrs. Beatha（注：Nebraska Furniture Masters）般的商人，会主动来到我们这里。举个例子：1983 年我达成了一笔交易，密西西比州有家店也来报价，但那家店的女主人只说：“我不在乎你是谁，只需要保留 20% 的公司股份。”她有四个孩子，她要留 20%。

She told them you know I’m selling Mr. Buffett shoes communist or above and I tell her when she was 104 and back when I walked in the first to hear him my new boyfriend wish I didn’t I don’t get a lot of places I get tired of that. Yeah but she you know she she built this. She came over here in 1921 too she landed in Seattle with a tag around her neck. She couldn’t speak a word of English said Fort Dodge Iowa. She couldn’t couldn’t communicate. She said that had the American Red Cross got her out to Fort Dodge and for two years she got no place because nobody nobody spoke Russian and or Yiddish actually. And so she moved on just to be around a lot of Russian Jews who she could talk to. She learned the English language when her oldest daughter Frances would go to school and come home at night and teach her good words. And she started and she started saying 50 bucks at a time over to Russian or or 70 she has seven siblings. And her mother and father to get them over here after 16 years she bought all the family over she say five hundred dollars and 60 years. Pedaling is calling whatever. And she started in the restaurant of the 500 hours and established artists home furnishings complex in the world. And it all came from 500 dollars in a very special woman. And can you imagine building something like that and selling it to some financial operators and the result you’ll go public with a couple of years later. And you know it meant something. She wanted it to continue like it has continued. And that’s that.

她告诉他们：“你知道我卖的都是巴菲特先生级别的上等货。”那时她已经 104 岁了，当我第一次去听她说这些话的时候，我的新男朋友都劝我别去，说我没必要跑那么远，但我就是常常跑去听。是的，但她——你知道的——就是靠这番精神将事业做了起来。她也是在 1921 年移民到美国的，带着一块写着“爱荷华州福特道奇”的牌子在西雅图下了船。当时她一句英语都不懂，根本无法交流。后来美国红十字会把她送到福特道奇，但在那儿也呆了整整两年，没有落脚处，因为没有人会说俄语或意第绪语。于是她又搬到一个俄罗斯裔犹太人较多的社区，她能和人交流才留下来了。她学英语是靠大女儿弗朗西丝，每天上学回来教她新词。她当时开始把“50美元一次”这样的话，从俄语或意第绪语说出口。她还有七个兄弟姐妹，父母盼着能让全家人移民过来。经过16年挣扎，她花了 500 美元把全家接到了美国——60 年过去了，这笔钱至今对家族来说都意义重大。她从摆摊卖餐饮用的小工具起步，最终创建了全世界最大的家居用品连锁之一。这一切，都源于一位非凡女性的 500 美元创业资金。你能想象吗？她将这样体量的企业卖给了一些金融操作人，几年后公司上市了。你明白，这对她而言意义重大——她希望自己的事业能一如既往地延续下去，而它也确实做到了，这就是事实。

Those are the kind of people we want to attract. Is it so much me selecting them as them selecting Berkshire. I mean that’s that’s the key. And and frankly we’ve gotten to that position in this country where the people do care about their businesses. It is. There’s no second choice to be on site Berkshire we get they come to us. We had a woman Doris Christopher come to us last year or Christopher in 1980 had two little girls lived in Chicago lived in a twenty thousand dollar house. She and her husband both work looking for something to do to make a little extra money. She thought about catering and decided that it would take her away and the kids too much. So she decided that you know best though was she bought a home ec teacher. She knew cooking and as you know the kitchen and what was useful to people. So she borrowed three thousand dollars and her life insurance policy that’s all she had. She went out of oversee she noticed Martin Chicago and said what’s the least amount of this utensil utensil manufacturer was so usually doesn’t. And she took them home and then she got the as she had the idea that she would hold these parties essentially in people’s homes. And so she arranged with the woman in suburban Chicago to hold the first party. She almost turned back. She’s right there should laugh at me and a lot of overhead they will buy you what you do. You’re very unsure of. But she went there. She sold out.

那就是我们想吸引的那类人。关键不在于我选他们，而是在于他们选择了伯克希尔。这才是重点。坦率地说，我们在美国已经到了这样一个地步：企业家真正关心自己的生意。如果伯克希尔能成为他们的首选，他们就会主动来找我们。去年，有位名叫多丽丝·克里斯托弗的人来找过我们。事实上，这位克里斯托弗女士在 1980 年就开始创业，当时她和丈夫在芝加哥，一家只有两万美金的房子，养着两个年幼的女儿。他们两口子都要上班，还想着做点副业赚外快。她考虑过做餐饮外卖，但觉得那样会常常要离开家，对孩子不利。后来她灵机一动，发现厨艺是她的优势——她曾是家政教员，对厨房操作很熟悉，也知道什么器具对人们最实用。于是她把所有家当（仅有的一份人寿保单抵押得来三千美元）拿去建厂，联系了芝加哥制造厨具的厂家，问：“最少起订量是多少？”拿到几件样品后，她回家试用，然后想到可以在普通家庭里举办展示会。她便联系郊区的一位朋友举办了第一次展示会。那时候她几乎还想放弃，因为自己没有经验，人们也常常嘲笑：“你搞这个能行吗？成本这么高，谁会买？”但她还是坚持去了，第一次展示就大卖——完全售罄。

One hundred seventy five dollars worth of goods that I she sold me her business last year. And that business just made 140 million dollars pre-tax from this 3000 dollar investment. That woman had a passion for business and she understood her customers she loved her because she loved the people that work with 67000 associates. It’s called The Pampered Chef. Some of you may have been to a championship party. Almost one woman out of 10 of the United States wants something from us last year. And now unfortunately have to acknowledge that she probably didn’t understand that but she had her customer and she understood the people and she likes she likes people you know. I met her one time when she wanted to start a business. There wasn’t anybody else to sell to as far as she was concerned. You just came on we had a deal in a few minutes with a compensation deal. You know 15 seconds. She’s running as I’ve never been there and she I hope they’re there. I pay a lot of money for it as I did. Someday we’ll buy a business and I’ll just be some guy in a closet somebody amazing what triggers this month. I’ve never been there and I’ve met her and I’ve seen the results of what she’s done and she is in love with the company I don’t like the business of Berkshire acquired. Well the first thing I have to decide when somebody calls me is is valuing this business within my circle of competence. I don’t know how to value Microsoft. I don’t know how to value Oracle.

一百七十五美元的货物，那是她去年卖给我的生意。而那家企业仅凭这三千美元的投入，就在税前赚了1.4亿美元。那个女人对生意充满热情，她了解自己的客户，她爱这份事业，因为她爱和六万七千名员工共事的人。那家公司叫“被宠爱的厨师”（The Pampered Chef）。你们当中可能有人参加过他们的冠军派对。去年，美国几乎十分之一的女性都向我们购买了产品。遗憾的是，她自己大概并不了解这一点，但她了解客户，懂得人情世故，并且真心喜欢与人打交道。我曾在她想创业时见过她一次。在她看来，没有其他人能做这行，只要我一到，她当场就能和我谈成一笔薪酬协议——只有15秒钟。她一直在运营这家公司，我从未去过那里，但我相信他们在那儿，我为此支付了不少钱。将来我们也会收购一家企业，到时候我可能只是躲在办公室里，当个“幕后老板”，让人惊叹究竟是什么触发了这一切。我从未去过那个地方，但我见过她，并且看到了她取得的成绩：她对公司倾注了全部热爱。

I mean if you know Larry Ellison calls me or Bill Gates called me and they go but if any of those I don’t know or biotech or any I would not value. I just you know I wish him well and tell him I think it’s worth twice as much of a negative. I’m just not in the mood to buy today. I don’t so it has to do with my shirt. My circle of common is that businesses I can understand when I say understand I don’t even understand how to use a computer or not use a computer in terms of a computer. I didn’t understand what the economic characteristics of a business are and what the company is really going to look like in five or 10 or 20 years. Bill Gates will tell you that that he is here investing he would buy her Berkshire rather than Microsoft because is so much easier to understand what our businesses are going to look like whereas he’s in a business where you really have to be doing things differently over time. So I know that Wrigley’s is going to be the number one chewing gum in the country I know Snicker’s going to be the number one handywork in the country ten years from now isn’t the number one candy bar for 40 years. You don’t have to be very bright to understand that when people lay out 50 cents for something that they stick in their mouth that they’re not about experiment. Yeah I mean it’s so we we try to look at business as we can understand. I got a call a year and a half ago from a fellow I never heard of them in Denver’s name was Craig Paranzino.

至于伯克希尔收购哪些业务，我首先要决定的是，这家企业是否属于我的“能力圈”之内。比如，我不知道该如何给微软估值，也不知道如何给甲骨文估值。如果拉里·埃里森（Larry Ellison）或比尔·盖茨（Bill Gates）给我打电话请求出售他们的公司，而我又不懂生物科技等行业，我就没法做出判断。我会祝他们好运，并跟他们说：“我认为你手中的生意价值至少翻一番。对不起，我今天不想买。”这与我个人喜好无关，而是出于我的“能力圈”：我只买那些我能理解的生意。这里所说的“理解”，并不意味着我会操作电脑，只是我能看清一家企业的经济特征，知道五年、十年、二十年后它可能是什么模样。正如比尔·盖茨所说，他如果要投资，会选择伯克希尔而不是微软，因为他知道伯克希尔的业务未来会是什么样，而在他的行业里，技术不断变化，难以预测。所以我知道，十年后，益智力（Wrigley’s）依旧会是全国第一的口香糖，士力架（Snickers）也会是全国第一的巧克力棒。若消费者愿意掏五毛钱买这些食品，他们就不会在口味上冒险。我们就是尽量只做能理解的生意。一年半前，丹佛有个人给我打了个电话，我从没听过他，叫克雷格·帕兰齐诺（Craig Paranzino）。

He called me up and never heard of him and he said I’ve got a business this year kind of business and I’m going to I want to sell it. There’s the reasons I we have to do with health. And I don’t pay much attention to the reasons. And he said it’s the leading company by far in the custom picture frame business. And he said let me tell you why it has what I call durable competitive advantage. That’s what I call it urban about it he says. Tell you why it has it. He said there are 18000 people. The framed pictures in the United States little mom and pop operations every town Lincoln will have half a dozen or more have a dozen or an eight day frame pictures. I go over to get a picture frame. I hand it to somebody I say you follow their judgment I say you know biggest thing I want is I want a good looking frame and I want I want it back so I want I want quick delivery. Over 18000 people in that business and a zillion kinds of picture frames. Nobody can carry a big inventory. They don’t do that much business. I mean it’s not Wal-Mart or something of a sort. Craig Paranzino graduate school in Wisconsin went to work in a tiny little firm that made these things five or six years later bought the place when it was doing three million dollars a year out of 300 million dollars a year and a totally dominates that wouldn’t custom for Amos’s. Why does it dominate it down age. Because it calls on these 18000 people has a sales force calling on them six or eight times a year.

他给我打电话，我以前从没听说过他，他说他今年做了一个生意，想要把它卖掉。他提到的原因跟健康有关，但我并不太在意那些原因。他说这是定制相框行业中绝对领先的公司，并告诉我为何它具有所谓“持久竞争优势”。他解释说，为什么会这样：在美国，有18000多家制作相框的小型家庭作坊式企业。每个城镇，比如林肯，就会有半打甚至一打这样的相框店。我去买相框，把照片交给店员，让他们按自己的判断来做，我只关心两件事：相框要好看，而且要尽快拿到。市场上有无数种相框，但没人能够备齐大库存，因为这些店生意量并不大，不像沃尔玛那种规模。克雷格·帕兰齐诺在威斯康星读研究生时，进入一家小工厂做相框，五六年后，在那家公司年收入只有300万美元时，他买下了它。如今，这家公司年收入已达到3亿美元，完全主导了定制相框市场。它为何能称霸？正因为它有一支销售团队，每年会对这18000家店进行6到8次拜访。

And it has 22 plants around the country that can get a frame that the custom Kramer orders. Eighty five percent of the time they order by 5 o’clock that day they’ll have it by 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Think of that car. That’s what the customer wants. They don’t care whether they pay eighty three dollars or eighty eight hours to get everything from a you know you’ve got something you want done and you want it done fast. In the end a little custom framing taking 2000 people they want happy customers that needs speed of delivery and certainly all that you couldn’t build a distribution system to compete with us. I mean you know it’s just like you’re trying to build distributions isn’t starting to scratch. That would take that business away from us it can’t be done. Well Craigslist had to be in about 15 minutes. I had never thought about the doesn’t frame it in the spotlight. You know I’d frame pictures or had people crying before me and I understood the power of that that was in my day. I said I think we can make a deal. He came on Wednesday. He came at nine o’clock and he left it on record. We had a deal. I never seen him since he got the money. Probably after he was going to come to the annual meeting last year. But his wife was sick on measures a good guy and no one could knock as often as every time I buy a business I say to myself if I had a billion dollars and I wanted to go and compete with these guys could I knock them off.

并且在全国各地有22家工厂，能够快速生产出定制相框。85%的订单只要当天5点之前下，第二天下午3点就能送达。想想看，这就是顾客真正想要的服务。他们根本不在乎自己是花83美元还是88美元购买，只要能迅速拿到心仪的成品就行。归根结底，一个只有2000名员工的小型定制相框公司，只要让顾客高兴并满足快速交付，就足以取胜——要想从零开始建立一个与我们抗衡的配送系统，根本不可能做到。这就好比，你要白手起家构建整个分销网络，那生意就不可能被抢走。当时克雷格的介绍通话只用了大约15分钟，我之前从未想到相框能有这么大的机会。你知道吗？把相框挂在墙上甚至让人感动落泪，我理解那种力量，那是我的时代。我当时就说：“我觉得我们可以达成交易。”那人周三9点来和我见面，当场在电话里敲定了协议。自从他拿到钱后，我就再也没见过他。去年他本想来参加年度股东大会，可因为妻子生病就没能来。他是个好人。我几乎每次收购企业时，都会问自己：如果我有10亿美元，想来跟他们正面竞争，我能把他们打败吗？

You know if you gave me a billion dollars and you told me to dislodge Snickers as the number one candy bar in the country I don’t know how to do it. If you tell me I’ve got a billion dollars I got to make it or. Five billion. I got to make it so that Wrigley’s spearmint you know that will mean Juicy Fruit. All of those get knocked off the top something Douglas. I can’t do it. If you give me a you know if you give me a billion dollars and tell me to knock off all the ladies apparel shops and I’m going to you know I’ll make mincemeat of them very fast. I mean I have a very good business myself but I can destroy that. And the real test is you know because some idiot with a lot of money destroy the business you got. If you decides to be with here and we we try to buy businesses where no matter who comes along you know they’ve got this durable competitive advantage. Those are the three words that count and you can make that. You may be able to make that decision about companies that I can’t make that decision about that they have to be pretty simple for me. We buy things that we have fruit of the Loom underwear. Are people going to quit wearing underwear clothes when we sell 44 percent of all the mens and boys underwear that goes through Wal-Mart and all of the mass merchandising chains. We have the lowest cost around for the loom as an aim has been Rossett 18 50 or 60.

如果你给我十亿美元，让我把士力架从全美第一的糖果棒位置上拉下来，我根本不知道该怎么做。如果你给我十亿美元，或者五十亿美元，让我把箭牌的绿箭口香糖、甚至是珍宝珠这些产品从榜首拉下来，我也做不到。但如果你给我十亿美元，让我干掉所有的女士服装店，我可能很快就能把它们搞得一团糟。我自己拥有很不错的生意，但即便如此，我也能轻易毁掉它。真正的考验就是，有个蠢货拿着大把钱也毁不掉你的生意。我们试图购买那些无论谁来竞争都具有持久竞争优势的企业。“持久竞争优势”，这几个字才是关键所在。你可能可以判断某些公司，而我却无法判断，这些公司对我来说必须非常简单明了。我们买了像Fruit of the Loom这样的内衣品牌。人们会停止穿内衣吗？我们通过沃尔玛和各大零售渠道销售了全美44%的男士和男孩内衣，而且我们的成本是最低的。Fruit of the Loom这个品牌从1850或1860年起就一直广受欢迎。

If you can buy three pairs of shorts from monster with six EURES or whatever is her five and a half bucks and nobody’s going to solve sheepman why are going to buy anything else. Well all that is unless we mess up somewhere. We’ve got a very potent advertisings. So hard to cover the asses of the masses that. Yeah there. Or could you repeat that just a little a lot. I think that most of the time you again yell fluff OK. The question is why don’t since I say a one or two years doesn’t make much difference in business but long term. How do I play that my life. Well you know I could probably give you some terribly philosophical answer on it. But the truth is I get up every day and just do what I love doing. And you know I want people will Romney to have good experiences. But you know the truth is I don’t spend most of my time thinking about that. I mean I’ve spent most of my time thinking about what can I do to keep Berkshire going the way it has going. But I will tell you how to apply that and it works reasonably well I think that Berkshire because we get to sell selection of people that mean we have created a working environment we’re in 38 years nobody’s left that runs. So I know I do feel good about that. Obviously I feel good about the results of the investors and the officers and those people. I mean actually I think if they write a book about what’s happened with all the money that all these different people have made at Berkshire.

如果你能用六欧元或五块半美元就能买到三条短裤，没有人能比我们成本更低，那么为什么还要买其他品牌呢？除非我们自己搞砸了。我们有非常强大的广告能力，牢牢地覆盖了广大消费者的需求。这么说吧——请你再重复一下你的问题，好吗？我想你大部分时候说得有些模糊。问题是，既然我认为一两年的变化在生意上没有太大的影响，那么从长期来看，这种观念又如何体现在我的人生上？其实我可以给你一个非常哲学化的答案，但事实是，我每天起床都在做我热爱的事情。我当然希望周围的人都能拥有好的体验，但实际上，我并没有花很多时间去想这些事。我大部分的时间都在考虑如何让伯克希尔持续发展下去。但我可以告诉你这个理念如何应用得很好。因为伯克希尔在挑选人才方面做得非常成功，我们创造了一种工作环境，以至于在38年里，没有任何一位负责经营的人才离职。所以，这点让我感觉非常好。当然，我也为投资者和高管们取得的成果感到自豪。事实上，我认为如果有人写一本关于伯克希尔及其众多员工如何赚取财富的书，那一定会非常精彩。

But I’ll tell you the test on that and it’s a terrific question. Because you will when you get to my age you will not measure how well you’ve done but how much money you’ve got. I can guarantee you that you will all do fine on money anyway. I mean you know think about it seven hours a day. You know you’re in a bad way. You’ve got exactly the same mattress I’ve got if you don’t sell it to the furniture mart. You know I mean so. So that mom who had parody I can’t I can’t outdo you you know in terms of my sleeping enjoyment. You can you can match it I buy you the factors which will give you a special price. Just mention my name. We eat at the same places. You know we had a Dairy Queen particularly if you’re in my position because we own it. We eat at McDonald’s and Burger King and when I leave here I’ll stop by a fast food place and we are eating insurgences. We travel the same. I mean I had a 10 year old car up till about a year ago and it just doesn’t make any difference to me at all. They all work. We live in a place that’s warm in the winter and it’s cool in the summer and we watch the Super Bowl on the screen. You do what I do. You know we dress more or less the same. I mean I pay more for my clothes but they look cheap. I put them on so we’re really on a parity.

但我可以告诉你真正的考验是什么，这是一个很棒的问题。当你到了我这个年纪，你衡量自己人生的标准绝不会是你赚了多少钱。我可以向你保证，你们在经济上都会过得很好。想想看，一天睡七个小时，在这一点上我们完全一样。只要你不把床垫卖回家具城，你睡的床垫和我的完全一样。所以从这个角度来看，我睡觉时的享受并不比你多。你只要去我投资的那家床垫工厂，说是我介绍的，他们会给你一个特别的价格。我们吃的东西也一样。比如我们会去Dairy Queen，尤其像我这样的，因为我们就是它的股东。我们吃麦当劳和汉堡王，今天从这里离开后，我可能也会顺便去个快餐店，我们吃的东西是一样的。旅行方式也差不多，我的车一直开了十年，直到最近一年才换掉，对我来说这根本没什么区别，车子都能开就行了。我们居住的地方冬暖夏凉，都在屏幕上看超级碗比赛，你和我做的事情其实是一样的。我们穿的衣服也差不多，虽然我买衣服花的钱更多，但穿在我身上看起来也很便宜，所以在这个问题上，我们处于同一水平。

So the money isn’t going to be that big a deal. Everybody in this country is going to know that with intelligence this group had the energy you have. You’re going to do well. So what’s was that it what really counts. Well I would say that you will measured health is enormously important and that’s a matter of a fair amount of luck. I mean are we. So I I don’t want I’m not shortchanging it I’m just saying you can’t do too much about that. But you will measure your success in life I was there. I how many. And he said what are the people you want. At 70 or whatever the age maybe you’ll measured by how many I’m really love you. You know in the end I mean you can’t you know you can’t buy love. I mean it doesn’t work you buy sex. My cousin O’Neill donors in my building you get all kinds of things but the only way you get involved is to be lovable. It’s kind of irritating actually about money. More fun to just write a check for more you know everybody you know from now on knows me but it doesn’t work that way. And in fact the only way is to be is to be lovable. And you know I’ve had this friend who who came out of Auschwitz and had a least one member of the family die there and but as it now it’s 60 years later. Now she’s still when she looks at people the Polish Drew when she looks at people the question she asked herself in determining who she really trusts as friends. One question in her mind is would they hide me.

因此钱真的没那么重要。美国的每个人都知道，凭借你们这一代人的聪明才智和精力充沛，你们都会过得不错。那么究竟什么才是真正重要的呢？我认为你衡量人生成功的重要标准之一是健康，但这很大程度上取决于运气。我并不是低估健康的重要性，而是想强调你对它无能为力。但你真正衡量人生成功的标准会是，到你七十岁或者更老的时候，有多少人是真正爱你的。最终，你无法用钱买到爱，钱买不到爱，你可以买到性，我的堂兄奥尼尔就是我的邻居，你可以买到各种各样的东西，但你唯一得到爱的途径就是让自己变得值得被爱。这其实挺恼人的，如果花钱就能买到爱，那该有多简单，我只要多写几张支票就好了，从此所有人都会认识我，但事实并不是这样。实际上，你获得爱的唯一方式就是成为一个值得被爱的人。我有个朋友，她从奥斯维辛集中营里幸存下来，家里至少有一个成员在那里死去，现在已经过去了60多年，她还是用同样的标准看待周围的人。她是个波兰犹太人，她判断一个人是否值得真正信任并视之为朋友时，心里总是会问自己一个问题：“如果灾难再一次来临，这个人会愿意藏匿我吗？”

When you get to be 70 you have a lot of people that would hide you. You’ve had a successful life. I know people who have a tremendous amount of money. No one would hide their own kids wouldn’t hide them. I mean they they really wouldn’t. I mean their business associates wouldn’t or anybody else if it really came down to it you know they that they don’t have anybody’s respect. They’ve got their attention maybe with money or something but nobody loves them and my friend Tom Murphy at capsid. I mean dozens of people would hide Murff you know all kinds of people would hide my wife. You know Ben Graham a lot of people would have my dad at that number and then like I say that I can I can tell you people that you know everybody may pay homage to him and the kids may put up with them and hope they don’t change their will or something but the truth is that nobody would hire them. And if you’ve got a lot of people that would hire you when you get to be 70 you will have a very successful life. OK right now we’re so just in terms of personal goals or how well I would know the truth is the main goal I have had has been at Berkshire. I mean it might be more admirable to say I didn’t I was feeding the poor somebody some someplace in. But it isn’t true. It it’s been the focus of my life. Most of the time the money will be used for very good purposes later.

当你到了70岁的时候，如果有很多人愿意为你藏匿，你这一生就算成功了。我认识一些人，他们拥有巨额的财富，却没有任何人愿意为他们冒险藏匿，甚至连他们自己的孩子都不愿意这样做。他们的商业伙伴或其他人也是如此，关键时刻这些人得不到任何人的尊重。也许因为他们有钱，人们会关注他们，但没有人爱他们。我有个朋友Tom Murphy，在CapCities公司工作，数十个人都会愿意为他藏匿。各种各样的人会愿意为我妻子藏匿；本杰明·格雷厄姆也有很多人会愿意为他藏匿；我父亲也一样。我还可以告诉你一些人，他们可能人人表面恭维，甚至子女们也只是勉强忍受，担心遗嘱改变。但事实是，没有人真正愿意为他们冒险。所以，如果你到了70岁时，有很多人愿意为你藏匿，那你的人生就非常成功了。说到我的个人目标或我如何定义成功，事实上我生命中最主要的目标一直是伯克希尔公司。或许我说自己人生的目标是去救济某个地方的穷人，听起来更值得钦佩，但这并不是真的。伯克希尔一直是我人生的重心。我大部分的财富最终都会用在很好的用途上。

I don’t use any real heart of myself but actually somebody else was going to do most of that. And I pick good people to do it. But I have got three kids of which I’m enormously proud and they and they like each other they get you know they do things together they work you know the family works extremely well. But my wife gets ninety nine point nine percent of the credit for that. I mean if you didn’t turn out well under her is really wrong. And it’s know it’s it’s a life. There’s a lot of fun but it’s I do what I enjoy doing. You know I I play like The Bridge on the internet because I like to do that more than anything else. I used to do way more reading. I do a lot of reading but I just read all the time. Now I spend 12 hours a week on the Internet vibration and I know it’s great. I will talk to the Microsoft summit here in about a month and I tell this group there’s all these high powered internet types and I tell them look at you know you guys are all failures. Here I am got all kinds of money. You know I don’t fool with the internet after 10 or 12 years I spend 12 or 14 hours a week on it mostly bridge. But I do the Google searches and I’m writing a talk. I will I will do all kinds of information on it. And I read the New York Times The Wall Street Journal tower the night before all these things you guys are getting exactly 120 bucks a year out of me. And that is a failure.

我自己并不会亲自去使用大部分的钱，实际上，将来大部分的钱都会由别人负责使用，而我挑选了非常合适的人去完成这件事。我有三个让我感到非常自豪的孩子，他们彼此相处融洽，一起做事，家庭关系非常和谐。不过，我妻子在这一方面应该获得99.9%的功劳。如果在她的培养下孩子们还没成长好，那一定是哪里出了大问题。我的生活很有趣，我一直都做自己喜欢做的事情。我喜欢在网上打桥牌，这比其他任何事情都让我感到愉快。我过去看书多得多，虽然现在我依然读很多书，但过去基本上所有时间都在读书。现在我每周会花12到14个小时在网上打桥牌，我觉得这非常棒。下个月我会去微软峰会发表演讲，面对的是一群网络行业精英，我会告诉他们：“你们其实都是失败者。看看我，我拥有这么多的钱，这10到12年里我几乎不怎么上网，我每周花12到14个小时在网上，而大部分时间都是用来打桥牌。但我也会使用谷歌搜索，为我的演讲搜集各种信息。我每晚睡前都会阅读《纽约时报》和《华尔街日报》，而你们这些人，每年从我这里只赚到120美元的网络服务费，这只能算是一种失败。”

They have not figured out how to get any money out of me and I gained this last year. And this year I’m back and say you made no progress at all. And you know 20 bucks last year this year and in between I had 600 hours of enjoyment. Nerd all kinds of things. So I do enjoy you know I enjoy that morning when I was young I had a lot of money and you know I don’t know professional sports even I play golf all the time maybe have my own private golf course. All kinds of things. He thanked me a I have something where 365 days a year. Everything is good. I work around terrific people here today that cable had broken down. And I mean I get to select the people I work with that’s a huge huge lottery. I literally just think that had to work for a boss you couldn’t stand our ground people because your stomach churn. It is what I mean to be miserable. The ultimate luxury really is doing something every day that you love doing with people that you be doing it with. And I got that by accident. I said you if you if you take on a job just to make a lot of money and because you’re someone that you’re you you and I don’t kick the dog in was sort of thing you know that that’s a little bit like marrying for money. You know this is probably a bad idea under any circumstances but if you’re already rich it’s crazy right.

他们到现在也没想出从我这里赚更多的钱的方法，这一年也一样。到了今年，我又回来跟他们说，你们一点进步也没有啊。去年赚了我20美元，今年还是一样，在这之间，我享受了600小时的快乐。各种各样的小事带来的乐趣。所以我很享受这一切。我年轻时曾想，如果我有很多钱，也许我会买一个职业球队，也许我天天打高尔夫，也许我还有自己的私人高尔夫球场，有各种各样的享受。但现在我拥有的是每天都过得非常愉快。我身边有非常棒的人，比如今天电缆坏掉了，现场的人立刻修好了问题。更重要的是，我能够挑选和我共事的人，这简直就是中了大奖。你试想一下，如果你不得不为一个你根本无法忍受的老板工作，或跟让你胃疼的人在一起工作，那将是多么悲惨的事啊。真正的奢侈是，每一天都做你喜欢的事情，和你喜欢的人共事。而我只是偶然地得到了这些。如果你接受一份工作只是为了赚很多钱，但实际上这工作让你极为不舒服，每天回家都会心情烦躁，那这就有点像为了钱而结婚。无论怎样，为钱结婚总是一个坏主意，而如果你已经很富有了，还为钱结婚，那简直是疯狂的，对吧？

I mean if I marry for money I mean I have examined what’s it going to do you know. And so it’s you know it’s it is. And we’re lucky in this country. I mean we won what I call the ovarian lottery one we were born in this country. It was four times more likely to have been born in China just like we had been born of Bangladesh. You’re born the greatest insight in the world so make the most of it and have a good time. See who’s had. OK. Up there you guys are invited out. Well yeah. Good question. I always say well I love it. And you know my my grandfather went to Central High. My dad went there. My wife went there my kids went there and now our grandchildren are there. They are my grandchildren. So they have the same teacher that my granddaughter. But there’s continuity there’s friends there are all kinds of things. I mean there’s no disadvantage to being an orphan. I mean I like New York when I’m married at a house in California you know and I get around some but I can’t imagine anything better. I mean I you know what. What doesn’t it have I have a home. I never sold a house in my life. I have a home I’m moved into a 1958. So I’ve been there about 45 years or so. I’m five minutes from the office. I move into the office in 1962 and are 41 here. We’ve just gotten so we take it we take a whole for 41 years where we can use a whole floor kind of discouraging.

我是说如果我为了钱结婚，我确实思考过这样做到底有什么好处。我们能出生在这个国家真的是非常幸运，我称之为赢得了“卵巢彩票”。我们出生在美国，但我们出生在中国的可能性要高四倍，我们出生在孟加拉国的可能性也是如此。你出生在世界上最好的地方，那就好好利用这个机会，尽情享受生活吧。看看还有谁有问题？好吧，上面的各位，请提问。这是个好问题。我一直都说，我很喜欢奥马哈。我祖父曾就读中央高中，我父亲也在那里上学，我妻子也在那里，我的孩子们也一样，现在我的孙辈也在那里读书。我的孙辈甚至有和我的孩子们相同的老师。这种延续性，有朋友、有亲密的关系，所有这些都是无价的。住在奥马哈根本没有任何缺点。我也喜欢纽约，我刚结婚的时候在加州买过房子，当然我也到处走走看看，但我真的无法想象比奥马哈更好的地方了。奥马哈缺什么呢？我一辈子从未卖过房子。我1958年搬进了现在的家，已经住了大约45年。我家距离办公室只有5分钟路程。我在1962年搬进办公室，已经待了41年了。我们刚刚租下一整层楼，这41年来才刚刚扩张到一整层，想起来也挺让人沮丧的。

But there there I am five minutes we. Everything is easy and all works. And all I know the doctors all my life and I want everybody to feel connected. I had taught in the public school system and I’m alive. I named a scholar prize that I get after her. But I mean it all means something. And I lived in New York for a couple of years I’ve been to Washington D.C. for some years and never felt that kind of connection at all. So there is absolutely no disadvantage. I get the same information. Actually with the with the Internet and Bloomberg and all that I know I can get any information any faster than I can get it. There’s just no downside. And I think it’s been a terrific environment for my kids to grow up in. I mean my kids are growing up in a neighborhood perfectly normal neighborhood. I mean you know open houses around it. No no no golden ghettos or anything of the sort. It Gandu an integrated public school. School has probably had as many 20 30 percent black students for 75 years. They had great teachers. I mean I think that you know part of education is a total life experience. And I think it’s great that we have a public school system and a small island in Washington or Los Angeles or New York that is and I get the private school. I would not do that. I do it because I wouldn’t send them to a vastly inferior school just to prove some point. But the nice thing about it and make that choice Sonoma.

但是我住在办公室附近五分钟的地方，这里的一切都非常方便，一切运转顺畅。我认识这里所有的医生，这种生活的连接感让我很满意。我姑妈曾在这里的公立学校教书，我还以她的名字命名了一个奖学金，这些事情对我来说都有很重要的意义。我曾在纽约住过几年，在华盛顿特区也住过一段时间，但从未感受到同样的连接感。因此在奥马哈生活完全没有任何缺点。我能获得的信息和其他地方完全一样。实际上，有了互联网、彭博这些工具，我能以前所未有的速度获取信息，完全不存在劣势。我认为奥马哈是一个非常棒的成长环境，我的孩子们就是在一个非常普通的社区里长大的，周围的房子也都是普通人家，没有什么黄金隔离区或类似的东西。他们上的也是一个种族融合的公立学校，这所学校大概75年以来，一直都有20%至30%的黑人学生，并且教师队伍优秀。我认为，教育的重要组成部分之一就是全方位的生活体验。我们这里拥有优秀的公立学校体系，这很棒。如果我住在华盛顿、洛杉矶或纽约这样的小范围地区，而那里公立学校品质又不好，我就不得不给孩子们选择私立学校。我不会仅为了证明某个观点而把孩子送到明显差劲的学校去。但幸运的是，在奥马哈，我并不需要做出这样的选择。

I’ve got classy public schools the same kind of up to 50 or 60 years ago and they get more out of that experience in my view have a better balanced view of life. Going through that experience you know I sent them off to some private school. I was with actually last week. There were six couples. Bill Melinda Gates arranged it and they had the headmaster of a private school in Seattle that the bell went to. It’s a class school but you know if you read I gather from that in terms of the public school system that you’re making a conscious decision to hurt your kid if you don’t send them to a private school if you can afford one. And that’s what these people do. And I don’t blame them. I do the same thing. But the nice thing about it is that on I’m sure LinkedIn as well and throughout in Nebraska we have kept a good public school system. Frankly I think that’s where the most important things in America. Because one of the things that has made America what it is thinking about it the 1776 three million people in America 300 million people in China and a hundred times as many people had the same IQ as we had. You know they had the same physical abilities and all that sort of thing. They had a culture of the work far back they had lots of natural resources. We didn’t know a lot of them because we didn’t have oil and they didn’t have oil but we both had oil and coal.

奥马哈拥有和50、60年前一样优质的公立学校体系，我认为孩子们能从这样的环境中获得更多，并形成更平衡的生活观。如果孩子去私立学校，这种经历可能就会有所不同。实际上，上周我和另外六对夫妇在一起聚餐，是比尔和梅琳达·盖茨组织的活动，当时还有比尔曾就读的西雅图一所私立学校的校长在场。那所私立学校非常好，但通过交流我感到，对于那些经济条件允许却选择不送孩子上私立学校的人来说，他们似乎是在有意伤害自己的孩子。那些富裕的家庭都会选择私立学校，我理解他们的选择，在同样情形下，我也会这么做。但庆幸的是，在奥马哈以及整个内布拉斯加州，我们一直拥有非常优质的公立学校体系。我认为，这其实是美国最重要的基石之一。回头想想1776年，美国只有300万人口，而中国当时已有3亿人口，也就是说，中国当时拥有的高智商人口比我们多100倍。他们和我们一样聪明，身体素质也一样优秀，拥有悠久的工作文化和丰富的自然资源。当时我们并不知道很多资源的存在，比如我们那时不知道自己和中国一样拥有石油和煤炭资源。

All of these things you lie in educational institutions are far surpassed ours at the time and now we end up 200 30 years later we end up with know thirty six or seven percent of the world’s GDP. And from those three million people something about the system really works. And I think one of the things that worries about as it is we come closer to equality of opportunity than any major country in the world. But one of the keys to having equal opportunity is a good public school system. You have one public school system for the rich one for the poor. You do not have equality of opportunity. And so it is really one of the top things on my list I got asked about you know what you can do with money. I think that anything that creates equality of opportunity right from the word go I’m talking about from when you’re five years old and actually my daughter is working on something that goes back before that. But anything that crazy equality of opportunity is what’s going to keep America what kind of America that we have now. It’s it’s vital and nothing more important than that than having a first class public school system. And unfortunately the communities where they’ve lost it don’t get it back. I say that about Sandy.

所有那些比我们当年更好的教育机构的国家，最终被我们超越了。230多年后的今天，美国竟然拥有了全球36%或37%的GDP。最初只有300万人口，却创造了如此的成就，这说明我们的体系确实发挥了作用。我认为，美国比世界上任何主要国家都更接近机会平等，这一点非常重要。但要实现真正的机会平等，关键之一就是拥有良好的公立教育体系。如果富人和穷人分别拥有不同质量的公立学校体系，就不存在真正的机会平等了。因此，当别人问我能用金钱做些什么时，改善教育公平始终是我的首要考虑之一。我认为，所有有助于创造机会平等的事情，都应该从一开始就做起，我指的是从孩子五岁甚至更小的时候就应该开始。实际上，我的女儿正在从事一些项目，正是从更早的年龄开始着手解决这个问题。任何能够创造机会平等的事情，都是维持美国现有优势的关键所在。没有什么比拥有一流的公立教育体系更重要了。不幸的是，那些失去优质公立教育的社区，往往再也无法重新获得。我曾多次用圣地亚哥作为一个例子来说明这一点。