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QuestionerCould you share two or three influences on you, those kinds of people, educators who have shaped your thinking on life and on investing? Thank you.
WarrenWell, I think the biggest educator, certainly in my case, initially was my father. I think probably Charlie Wood said the same thing. And I think you very, very, very important who you marry, and I've been lucky there. And those are great teachers. And, of course, I had Ben Graham, I had Dave Dodd. I've learned from all kinds of people who've written books over the years. I've just devoured those, and you're picking up things here and there. Charlie learned a lot from Ben Franklin, obviously. Many people think – many people think Ben Franklin learned a lot from Charlie, but we both learned a few things from my grandfather at the grocery store. But your parent – I tell the students, you know, the most important job you have, you know, as a teacher, as being the teacher to your children. I mean, you're the ultimate teacher. You're this big, great big thing, you know, provide warmth and food and everything else, and they're learning about the world. And they're not going to change a lot of that when they get into graduate school or sometimes. So it's – and you don't get any rewind button. You don't get to do it twice. So you have to be – you have to do your best as a teacher, and you teach by what you're – you do, not about what you say, with these young things. And by the time they've got the place where they're entering a formal school, they probably learn more from you than they're ever going to learn from anybody else. With me, I was put together by nature to learn from reading. Some guy's talking to me. He's telling me something I don't know. I don't want to know. I already know, or he's doing it too slow or too fast. In reading, I can. learn what I want at the speed that works. So to me, reading is the – is what works for my nature. And to all of you who are all like me, I say, welcome. It's a nice fraternity. You probably learn more from your father than you learn from all the reading you did it, aren't you think? In terms of actually forming you? Well, yes. And my father was the type that always did more than his share of the work and took more than his share of. the risk and all that kind of example was of course very helpful and you and you learn it better from a person close to you. But in terms of the conceptual stuff, I'd say I learned it from books. Now those are fathers in a different sense.