几年前，那时差不多80岁的本杰明.格雷厄姆向一个朋友表达了他希望每天都能做“一些愚蠢的事、一些有创造力的事、一些慷慨的事”的想法。（Several years ago Ben Graham, then almost eighty, expressed to a friend the thought that he hoped every day to do “something foolish, something creative and something generous.”）
这一古怪的目标中包含的内容，其实反映了格雷厄姆擅于以避免带有任何说教或自我成分的形式来包装自己的思想。虽然他的思想强大而有力，但它们的陈述却永远地温和而谦逊。（The inclusion of that first whimsical goal reflected his knack for packaging ideas in a form that avoided any overtones of sermonizing or self-importance. Although his ideas were powerful, their delivery was unfailingly gentle.）
本杂志的读者无需对格雷厄姆创造性成就的详细介绍。一个学科的奠基人发现他的研究成果并没有因为后来者而在短期内变得黯然失色，这是相当罕见的。然而，在这一将结构与逻辑带到无序而混乱领域的巨著出版后的四十多年里，很难再想到证券领域中可能有曾接近过格雷厄姆成就的第二人选。这个行业里，很多准则在出版后的几周或者几个月内就会看起来相当愚蠢，而格雷厄姆的准则却依然可靠，而且在金融风暴摧毁那些更浅薄的知识框架后，这些准则变得更具价值且得到更好地理解。他稳固可靠的建议给他的追随者们带来了无穷尽的回报——甚至能力不如那些更为有天赋的从业者的人（因为追随光鲜或流行的建议而摔了跟头），也获得了不错的回报。（Readers of this magazine need no elaboration of his achievements as measured by the standard of creativity. It is rare that the founder of a discipline does not find his work eclipsed in rather short order by successors. But over forty years after publication of the book that brought structure and logic to a disorderly and confused activity, it is difficult to think of possible candidates for even the runner-up position in the field of security analysis. In an area where much looks foolish within weeks or months after publication, Ben’s principles have remained sound—their value often enhanced and better understood in the wake of financial storms that demolished flimsier intellectual structures. His counsel of soundness brought unfailing rewards to his followers—even to those with natural abilities inferior to more gifted practitioners who stumbled while following counsels of brilliance or fashion.）
格雷厄姆在专业领域优势最突出的一方面是，这并不是将所有精力聚焦于某一个点、使思维被局限的情况下取得的。相反，他的成就是几乎无法定义的广泛思维活动带来的附产品。当然我从没遇到过一个具有与他相似眼界的有识之士。惊人的记忆力、对新知识无休止的迷恋、以及能够重塑这些知识以应用于看起来完全不相关问题，使他的思想在任何领域都显得有趣。（A remarkable aspect of Ben’s dominance of his professional field was
that he achieved it without that narrowness of mental activity that concentrates all effort on a single end. It was, rather, the incidental by-product of an intellect whose breadth almost exceeded definition. Certainly I have never met anyone with a mind of similar scope. Virtually total recall, unending fascination with new knowledge, and an ability to recast it in a form applicable to seemingly unrelated problems made exposure to his thinking in any
field a delight.）
而他的第三个特点就是慷慨，在这一点上他胜过其他所有人。我把格雷厄姆当作我的老师、我的老板更是我的朋友。在每一种关系里，就好像对待他的所有学生、员工与朋友一样，他在思想、时间、精力方面是完全开放、毫无保留的慷慨。如果你需要一个清晰的思维，没有比格雷厄姆更好的人选了。如果你需要的是建议或鼓励，那么格雷厄姆就在那里。（But his third imperative—generosity—was where he succeeded beyond all others. I knew Ben as my teacher, my employer, and my friend. In each relationship—just as with all his students, employees, and friends—there was an absolutely open-ended, no-scores-kept generosity of ideas, time, and spirit. If clarity of thinking was required, there was no better place to go. And if encouragement or counsel was needed, Ben was there.）
Walter Lippmann曾有“前人栽树、后人乘凉”之说，在我看来，格雷厄姆就是那位前人。（Walter Lippmann spoke of men who plant trees that other men will sit under. Ben Graham was such a man.）