Warren Buffett has compared investing to Olympic diving, sprinting, and the high jump. Here are his 7 best quotes about the Games.

• Warren Buffett has used the Olympics to explain several key ideas over the past 25 years.
• Buffett has compared investing to sprinting, diving, and the high jump.
• Fortune 500 CEOs aren't picked solely on merit like Olympic athletes are, Buffett said.

Warren Buffett may well be tuning into the Olympic Games this week, given the billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO has repeatedly referenced the sports competition over the past 25 years.

Buffett has invoked the Olympics to explain why he only invests in things he understands, why the best deals can be the simplest ones, and why asset valuations are always relative. The Berkshire chief has also used the event to highlight why brands pay so much to be sponsors, and to underscore that the bosses of America's biggest companies aren't all chosen purely on merit.

Here are Buffett's 7 best quotes about the Olympics, lightly edited and condensed for clarity:

1. "The Olympics are a wonderful event. The more people who participate in them, the better. On balance, they contribute to a better world over time." (Berkshire's annual shareholder meeting in 2008)

2. "If you go to the Olympics, if you run the 100 meters well, you don't have to throw the shot put. Some other guy can throw the shot put, and you'll still get a gold medal, if you run the 100 meters fast enough. We try to stay within our circle of competence." (2006)

3. "This is not like Olympic diving where they have a 'degree of difficulty' factor. If you can do some very difficult dive, the payoff is greater if you do it well than if you do some very simple dive. That's not true in investments. You get paid just as well for the most simple dive, as long as you execute it all right. And there's no reason to try those three-and-a-halfs when you get paid just as well for just diving off the side of the pool and going in cleanly." (1998)

4. "We look for 1-foot bars to step over, rather than 7-foot or 8-foot bars to try and set some Olympic record by jumping over. And it's very nice, because you get paid just as well for the 1-foot bars." (1998)

5. "Interest rates are to the value of assets what gravity is to matter. You've had this incredible reduction in the short-term Treasury bill, and that is the yardstick against which other values are measured. If I could reduce gravity's pull by about 80%, I'd be jumping in the Tokyo Olympics." (2021)

6. "The CEOs of the Fortune 500 are not selected like 500 members of the American Olympic track-and-field team. You do not have the uniformity of top quality that you get with the American Olympic team in any sport. You do not get that in top management in American business. You get some very able people, some terrific people, like Bill Gates. But you get a lot of mediocrity too." (1996)

7. "The truth is, either of the two major colas that are going to be sold and associated with, say, the Olympics or Disney World, are going to lose a lot of money, if only directly thought of in terms of those contracts. But there is that association over years. Coke wants to be where people are happy, and they want that in people's minds. That tends to be sporting events - it's the Disneylands of the world." (2002)