主题： Politics and Current Events

I think the number-one problem of mankind is weapons of mass destruction. I mean, we have learned since 1945 how somebody with bad intent or some organization with bad intent or occasionally, some government with bad intent, the knowledge is there of how to kill millions of people. And in some cases, the intent might be there.

They have tried an experiment where the imperfections in it are becoming manifest.… They melded into a single currency for 17 countries, but they didn’t meld the culture, they didn’t meld the fiscal policies. They either have to come closer together in a major way, or they need to separate.

Looking back, he probably should have prepared the American public somewhat better for what laid ahead.… There was not going to be some magic wand when he came in 2009. I admire him enormously and the actions taken, but to the extent that people thought we were going to cure everything in six months or eight months or ten months, that was a mistake.

I think we will talk about a president [who], where our economic machine came off the tracks like it hadn’t since the 1930s, put it back on the tracks and got it going very well. And I think that’s huge.

Pascal, it may be recalled, argued that if there were only a tiny probability that God truly existed, it made sense to behave as if He did because the rewards could be infinite whereas the lack of belief risked eternal misery. Likewise, if there is only a 1% chance the planet is heading toward a truly major disaster and delay means passing a point of no return, inaction now is foolhardy. Call this Noah’s Law: If an ark may be essential for survival, begin building it today, no matter how cloudless the skies appear.

We don’t own any gun manufacturers but I have not issued any edict, for example, to the two managers that run money besides me at Berkshire that they can’t own stock in gun manufacturers.

They are starting to unleash human potential in China the same way we’ve been unleashing human potential since 1776. And I’m all for that. We should much prefer to have a prosperous China than a China that has problems. If you postulate two worlds, one in which we’re an island of prosperity, 315 million, and the rest of the world is sitting there envious; or postulate something where the rest of the world is growing even faster than we are, but we’re also benefiting, just choose which world you want.

We may be sitting here because two Jewish immigrants signed a Letter to Roosevelt after fleeing Europe and coming to the United States. Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote the president and warned him that Nazi Germany was developing nuclear weapons.… The quality of immigrants, the motivation of immigrants, this is what has contributed to the greatness of the country.

I really thought we were going to get hit again. And the reason we haven’t been hit again, you know, we won’t know all the reasons. But somebody has done a lot of things right … over the years, both administrations, to keep that from happening. But the desire to do us harm exists in the hearts of too many people around the world, and they’re looking for new ways to do it, and we need an ever-vigilant government, and I think we have one.

Why, you might ask, didn’t I recognize the [risk of terrorist attacks] before September 11th? The answer, sadly, is that I did—but I didn’t convert thought into action. I violated the Noah rule: Predicting rain doesn’t count; building arks does.