The best sayings, advice, and words of wisdom for people investing in gold and silver

Gold, silver, and other precious metals have long been a store of wealth for mankind—from the most ancient civilizations to the modern day. And throughout the centuries, lots and lots of people have talked about it.

Below, we’ve curated a list of the most memorable quotes about gold from philosophers, poets, politicians, economists, actors, comedians, and other individuals throughout history. This list isn’t remotely comprehensive because, let’s face it, none of us have all day. But we hope you enjoy it nevertheless.

Entertainers and Celebrities

  1. “Gold was a gift to Jesus. If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!” – Mr. T
  2. “I like gold because it is a stabilizer; it is an insurance policy.” – Kevin O'Leary
  3. “The finest compliment you can pay a man is that his word was as good as gold.” – Evel Knievel
  4. “They don't give you gold medals for beating somebody. They give you gold medals for beating everybody.” – Michael Johnson
  5. “Gold is forever. It is beautiful, useful, and never wears out. Small wonder that gold has been prized over all else, in all ages, as a store of value that will survive the travails of life and the ravages of time.” — James Blakeley

Politicians and Presidents

  1. “Because gold is honest money it is disliked by dishonest men.” – Ron Paul
  2. “Gold will be around, gold will be money when the dollar and the euro and the yuan and the ringgit are mere memories.” — Richard Russell
  3. “We have gold because we cannot trust governments.” ― Herbert Hoover
  4. “There can be no other criterion, no other standard than gold. Yes, gold which never changes, which can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins, which has no nationality, and which is eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value par excellence.” – Charles de Gaulle
  5. “When paper money systems begin to crack at the seams, the run to gold could be explosive.” — Harry Browne

Writers, Poets, and Journalists

  1. “A US dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's not backed by gold or silver. It's a promissory note that doesn't actually promise anything.” – P. J. O'Rourke
  2. “As good as gold.” — Charles Dickens
  3. “Gold is still the ultimate store of wealth. It's the world's only true money. And there isn't much of it to go around. All of it ever mined would fit into a small building—a 56 foot cube. The annual world production would fit into a 14 foot cube, roughly the size of an ordinary living room. If each Chinese citizen were to buy just one ounce, it would take up the annual supply for the next 200 years.” – Mark Nestmann
  4. “My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.” ― John Gardner
  5. “My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.” – Anne Lamott
  6. “The world's central banks and the International Monetary Fund still have vaults full of bullion, even though currencies are no longer backed by gold. Governments hold on to it as a kind of magic symbol, a way of reassuring people that their money is real.” – James Surowiecki
  7. “If you trade in paper, the notion of many who trade gold…if the financial world comes to an end, they're going to have the gold. If you're playing in ETFs, you're going to have a piece of paper.” – Rick Santelli
  8. “The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice.” — Henry Hazlitt
  9. “Governments lie; bankers lie; even auditors sometimes lie: gold tells the truth.” – William Rees Mogg
  10. “To prefer paper to gold is to prefer high risk to lower risk, instability to stability, inflation to steady long-term values, a system of very low-grade performance to a system of higher, though not perfect, performance. — William Rees-Mogg
  11. “Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves.” – Norm Franz
  12. “Never trust money more than gold.” ― Toba Beta
  13. “The desire for gold is the most universal and deeply rooted commercial instinct of the human race.” – Gerald M. Loeb
  14. “The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
  15. “You have to choose [as a voter] between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.” – George Bernard Shaw
  16. “Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state.” — William F. Rickenbacker
  17. “Like Liberty, gold never stays where it is undervalued.” — John S. Morrill
  18. “It is extraordinary how many emotional storms one may weather in safety if one is ballasted with ever so little gold.” — William McFee
  19. “Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can it be gotten without it.” — Samuel Butler
  20. “O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper, Which makes bank credit like a bark of vapour.” – Lord Byron
  21. “Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.” – Leo Tolstoy
  22. “Gold opens all locks, no lock will hold against the power of gold.” – George Herbert
  23. “Gold—what can it not do, and undo?” – William Shakespeare
  24. “Pure gold does not rust. Only gold alloys do so. You may have golden dreams. But if you go in the company of toxic people, you become "a gold alloy" and what that means is that you can rust at any time!” ― Israelmore Ayivor
  25. “The beauty about gold, though, is that in all states from uncertainty to conviction, it never for once gives up its lustre.” ― Ufuoma Apoki
  26. “I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.” ― Henry David Thoreau
  27. “Betting against gold is the same as betting governments. He who bets on governments and government money bets against 6,000 years of recorded human history.” — Gary North
  28. “Even during the period when Rome lost much of her ancient prestige, an Indian traveler observed that trade all over the world was operated with the aid of Roman gold coins which were accepted and admired everywhere.” — Paul Einzig

Economists and Entrepreneurs

  1. “If ever there was an area in which to do the exact opposite of that which government and the media urge you to do, that area is the purchasing of gold.” — Robert Ringer
  2. “Bitcoin is not an actual physical coin, and if computers are shut down, you can't buy or sell them. That's why nothing will ever replace gold and silver coins themselves, and all investors should have them at home or in a safe deposit box.” – Mark Skousen
  3. “Commodities such as gold and silver have a world market that transcends national borders, politics, religions, and race. A person may not like someone else's religion, but he'll accept his gold.” – Robert Kiyosaki
  4. “Gold is valuable everywhere in the world and is not dependent on political systems, any specific government policy, or set of policies.” – Roy Sebag
  5. “Gold has intrinsic value. The problem with the dollar is it has no intrinsic value. And if the Federal Reserve is going to spend trillions of them to buy up all these bad mortgages and all other kinds of bad debt, the dollar is going to lose all of its value. Gold will store its value, and you'll always be able to buy more food with your gold.” – Peter Schiff
  6. “If the world does well, gold will be fine. If the world doesn't do well, gold will also do fine...but a lot of other things could collapse.” – Thomas Kaplan
  7. “If you want an alternative currency, check out gold. It has stood the test of thousands of years as a store of value and medium of exchange.” – Paul Singer
  8. “Until government administrators can so identify the interests of government with those of the people and refrain from defrauding the masses through the device of currency depreciation for the sake of remaining in office, the wiser ones will prefer to keep as much of their wealth in the most stable and marketable forms possible—forms which only the precious metals provide.” — Elgin Groseclose
  9. “If you don’t trust gold, do you trust the logic of taking a beautiful pine tree, worth about $4,000 – $5,000, cutting it up, turning it into pulp and then paper, putting some ink on it, and then calling it one billion dollars?” — Kenneth J. Gerbino
  10. “Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort.” — Antony C. Sutton
  11. “Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.” – David Ricardo
  12. “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.” – Alan Greendiv
  13. “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the ‘hidden’ confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.” — Alan Greendiv
  14. “A gold standard doesn't imply stability in the prices of the goods and services that people buy every day, it implies a stability in the price of gold itself.” – Ben Bernanke
  15. “Gold is money. Everything else is credit.” – J. P. Morgan
  16. “For more than two thousand years, gold’s natural qualities made it man’s universal medium of exchange. In contrast to political money, gold is honest money that survived the ages and will live on long after the political fiats of today have gone the way of all paper.” — Hans F. Sennholz
  17. “No other commodity enjoys as much universal acceptability and marketability as gold.” — Hans F. Sennholz
  18. “The gold standard sooner or later will return with the force and inevitability of natural law, for it is the money of freedom and honesty.” — Hans Sennholz
  19. “With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” — F.A. Hayek
  20. “Borrowers will default. Markets will collapse. Gold (the ultimate form of safe money) will skyrocket.” — Michael Belkin
  21. “The gold standard makes the money’s purchasing power independent of the changing ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence.” — Ludwig von Mises

Philosophers and Historical Figures

  1. “Although gold and silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and silver.” – Karl Marx
  2. “In reality, there is no such thing as an inflation of prices, relatively to gold. There is such a thing as a depreciated paper currency.” – Lysander Spooner
  3. “Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.” – Thomas Hobbes
  4. “O Zeus, why is it you have given men clear ways of testing whether gold is counterfeit but, when it comes to men, the body carries no stamp of nature for distinguishing bad from good.” ― Euripides
  5. “I see a great future for gold and silver coins as the currency people may increasingly turn to when paper currencies begin to disintegrate.” — Murray Rothbard
  6. “Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We’ll build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration. That’s the bastion of money.” — Adolf Hitler

Proverbs

  1. “The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.” – Attributed to a 1967 Wizard of Id comic strip
  2. “Real gold is not afraid of the melting pot.” – Chinese Proverb
  3. “If you are sick, think about your life; if you are better, think about your gold.” – Mongolian Proverb
  4. “If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.” ― Turkish Proverb
  5. “He fishes well who uses a golden hook.” – Latin Proverb