War & Peace Quote by Warren Buffett

Buffett’s line flatters patience while quietly threatening everything that passes for “good enough.” The phrasing is deceptively gentle: time is cast as a social force, a “friend” that keeps loyal company with greatness. But the second clause snaps shut like a balance sheet. Time isn’t neutral; it’s a ruthless auditor, compounding advantages for the exceptional and compounding consequences for the merely adequate.

The intent is classic Buffett pedagogy: steer investors away from the dopamine loop of quarterly noise and toward the slow physics of business quality. In his world, durable competitive advantages, disciplined capital allocation, and honest management aren’t abstract virtues; they’re traits that survive the wear-and-tear of cycles, recessions, new entrants, and shifting tastes. If a company is truly “wonderful,” time amplifies it through reinvestment, brand trust, network effects, and the quiet miracle of compounding. Time does the hard work so the investor doesn’t have to.

The subtext is a warning about mediocrity’s hidden tax. Mediocre companies can look fine when money is cheap, competition is sleepy, and expectations are low. Over time, those cushions deflate. Thin margins get thinner, small misjudgments stack, and the business has to hustle just to stand still. Buffett’s broader context - his letters, his disdain for short-termism, his “buy and hold” mythology - turns the quote into a moral argument: patience isn’t a personality trait. It’s an investment strategy that only works if the underlying business deserves to outlast you.