Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2010. The description of Buffett as “today considered the most expert investor in the world” and the reference to “this crisis”, the 2008 financial crisis, reflect that time. Buffett has since handed over the Berkshire Hathaway CEO role, at the end of 2025.
An interesting collection of the quotes that best capture the thinking of the man considered today to be the world’s most expert investor.
I took them from this Business Insider article. It has 15 quotes in total, but I’ve picked just seven of them, which show that Warren Buffett is a genius in the world of investing and business, and a role model we should follow.
1. “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.”
2. “I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am an investor.”
3. “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
4. “Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.”
5. “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
6. “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”
7. “The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble. We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.”
These seven quotes sum up practically everything we need to know about investing. Number 2 is especially important, because every entrepreneur needs an investor’s skills to succeed, and an investor is already a businessperson in their own right: their business is investing in businesses.
Number 5 is perhaps the one that best reflects what has happened in this global crisis, because that is when we saw which companies came out of it stronger and which didn’t.
Further reading
