Part IV

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PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES

IN THIS SECTION, I offer some personal perspectives in the form of five speeches I've given to general audiences, usually in academic forums. While each speech refers at least tangentially to my investment values and my career at Vanguard, taken as a whole their focus is frankly idealistic, speaking of values that go well beyond the mundane world of finance.

“The Hedgehog and the Fox” (Chapter 21) is the lecture I gave at Princeton University in February 1999 in conjunction with receiving the Woodrow Wilson Medal for “exemplifying the spirit of Princeton in the nation's service.” Using Archilochus’ ancient epigram that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one great thing,” I contrast the pallid investment accomplishments of most of the brilliant foxes who populate the U.S. financial system—who know so very much about, well, everything and trade stocks with a frenzy—with the superior accomplishments of the industry's few hedgehogs, best exemplified by the index fund strategists, who know only the great value of holding a low-cost all-market stock portfolio. I also discuss the power of idealism, and applaud education that is liberal and moral alike. In the speech, I cite a second article from that very Fortune magazine of December 1949 that inspired my thesis: “The Moral History of U.S. Business,” in which one early American businessman described “the enterprising man … [as] not merely a merchant but a man, with a mind to improve, a heart to cultivate, a character to form.” To this day, I continue to strive to reach those humble goals.

The next two chapters are brief addresses, the first given when I received an Honorary LL.D. degree from the University of Delaware. Here my theme, “The Majesty of Simplicity,” expounds on one of Tolstoy's maxims: “There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” The second address, perhaps surprisingly, is about the values of contemporary American society. My theme at the 115th commencement of The Haverford School in greater Philadelphia—“The Things by Which One Measures One's Life”—was based on a brief scene near the conclusion of the film A Civil Action. I express my concern that we have moved from Protagoras’ notion, expressed 2500 years ago, that “man is the measure of all things,” to a society in which, “things are the measure of the man.” It's a change that appalls me, and I urged the graduates to pay no regard to “things trivial and things transitory … and never to forget that who you are is far more important than what you have.

Chapter 24 is the most personal of all. “TelltaleHearts” is the story of two heart transplants. One is the tragedy of a boy who dies too young, but whose death is redeemed by the nobility of his parents, who, in an alien land, unhesitatingly make the decision to donate his organs so that others may live. The other is the triumph of a life prolonged, my own story as the recipient of a heart transplant. I reflect on what that experience has meant to me, and speculate on just why it is that human beings, confronted with death, so often seem driven to carry on with their careers. Two transplants involving four lives. Le coeur est mort, vive le coeur!

The final speech included in this book, “Press On Regardless,” given at Vanderbilt University's 1992 commencement, is also frankly idealistic—from President Coolidge, whose words gave me my title and theme; to Kipling (“triumph and disaster … treat those two imposters just the same”); to Gordon Gekko of the movie Wall Street (“Greed is good. Greed works, greed is right.” I disagreed!); to John Gardner (“Learn from your failures and your successes … by enjoying, by loving, by bearing life's indignities with dignity … teach the truth by living it.”); and St. Paul (“I press toward the mark”)—all words by which I have tried to conduct my life. Today, almost a decade later, I continue to press on with my own mission: To help America's families invest soundly in order to secure their financial futures.

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