My science family came from all over the world, and members were of varied backgrounds, cultures, and abilities. The diversity in this "small world" I worked in daily provided the most stimulating environment, with many challenges and much optimism. Over the years, my research group has had close to 150 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting associates. Many of them are now in leading academic, industrial and governmental positions. Working with such minds in a village of science has been the most rewarding experience – Caltech was the right place for me.

Her story is why I dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to the Malala Fund, to help give girls quality education, everywhere, anywhere in the world and to raise their voices. The first place this funding will go to is where my heart is, to build schools in Pakistan—especially in my home of Swat and Shangla.

We've just passed a milestone: Twenty years ago, on January 3, 1972, Blue Chip Stamps (then an affiliate of Berkshire and later merged into it) bought control of See's Candy Shops, a West Coast manufacturer and retailer of boxed-chocolates. The nominal price that the sellers were asking - calculated on the 100% ownership we ultimately attained - was $40 million. But the company had $10 million of excess cash, and therefore the true offering price was $30 million. Charlie and I, not yet fully appreciative of the value of an economic franchise, looked at the company's mere $7 million of tangible net worth and said $25 million was as high as we would go (and we meant it). Fortunately, the sellers accepted our offer. The sales of trading stamps by Blue Chip thereafter declined from $102.5 million in 1972 to $1.2 million in 1991. But See's candy sales in the same period increased from $29 million to $196 million. Moreover, profits at See's grew even faster than sales, from $4.2 million pre-tax in 1972 to $42.4 million last year.

The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters.

So I urge my sisters, and my brothers, not to be afraid. Be not afraid to denounce injustice, though you may be outnumbered. Be not afraid to seek peace, even if your voice may be small. Be not afraid to demand peace.

The progress we’ve made at home. For example, our debt issue. We inherited a 3.7 billion debt for our population and our export earnings. Today a majority of that debt has been cancelled and we’ve completed our first program with the IMF (International Monetary Fund). And also the restoration of hope. Today, you know, our image of being a pariah state, a failed state, has turned around completely. Whereas people — Liberians — were afraid to carry a Liberian passport, because you’d be seen as this nation of death and destruction. Today, Liberians are very proud to carry their passport because everybody sees Liberia as beginning to be uplifted and beginning to become a possible model of success, a post-conflict success story. I’m very proud of that turnaround in our image.

Mine has been a long journey, a lifetime journey to Oslo. It was shaped by the values of my parents and by my two grandmothers – indigenous Liberians, farmers and market traders – neither of whom could read or write. They taught me that only through service is one's life truly blessed.