Wriston Quotes

#1. I believe as well that - that American strength is - is essential economic strength, family and value strength, military strength is essential for our own good that these things not only help secure peace for other people but preserve peace for us and - and promise greater prosperity for America.

Mitt Romney

#2. Countries don't go out of business ... The infrastructure doesn't go away, the productivity of the people doesn't go away, the natural resources don't go away. And so their assets always exceed their liabilities, which is the technical reason for bankruptcy. And that's very different from a company.

Walter Wriston

#3. The information revolution has changed wealth. Intellectual capital is far more important than money.

Walter Wriston

#4. All of life is the management of risk, not its elimination.

Walter Wriston

#5. As long as capital-both human and money-can move toward opportunity, trade will not balance.

Walter Wriston

#6. We are more than the person who wakes each day. We are the dreams of the previous night and the nightmares of the week before.

Shaun Hick

#7. Human capital will go where it is wanted, and it will stay where it is well treated. It cannot be driven; it can only be attracted.

Walter Wriston

#8. Capital goes to where it can escape taxation and be used to pay employees in sacks of rice.

Walter Wriston

#9. Information about money has become almost as important as money itself.

Walter Wriston

#10. A country does not go bankrupt.

Walter Wriston

#11. Those who misrepresent the normal experiences of life, who decry being controversial, who shun risk, are the enemies of the American way of life, whatever the piety of their vocal professions and the patriotic flavor of their platitudes.

Henry Wriston

#12. The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.

Walter Wriston

#13. The problem of abolishing want is not a problem in division, as the politicians so often aver; it is a problem of multiplication.

Henry Wriston

#14. Banking is a branch of the information business.

Walter Wriston

#15. If peace is to come, it must be peace within your own mind and heart. If hatred is to die, you must scotch it within yourself. If intelligence is to triumph, you must be intelligent. There is no other pathway, no other salvation.

Henry Wriston

#16. Risk is not a dirty word.

Walter Wriston

#17. The greatest testimony to the human spirit that I'm witnessing now is the fact that people still come back to work, after all that has been done to them. They are still willing to participate for a more positive future if they would be sincerely invited.

Walter Wriston

#18. Information is a business in itself. It is also something that has made control impossible ... you cannot get customers to accept prices in one place when they know there's a better deal elsewhere. It's a whole new world.

Walter Wriston

#19. There'll be a growing disparity between economics and politics. An economy that grows so rapidly is intractably global. On the other hand, the current political system is intractably national. So there is a growing dichotomy between a global economy and locally based politics.

Walter Wriston

#20. Among all the tragic consequences of depression and war, this suppression of personal self-expression through one's life work is among the most poignant.

Henry Wriston

#21. To assume you have it all figured out is a warning signal that you aren't humble enough to listen to God and to others. If you refuse to chisel away at arrogant attitudes, trouble lies ahead. You know very little if you claim to have all the answers.

Thomas A Kempis

#22. All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says.

Walter Wriston

#23. Many organizations are now trying to walk under the banner of The Learning Organization, realizing that knowledge is our most important product ... But the only place that I've seen it is in the Army. As one colonel said, "We realized a while ago that it's better to learn than be dead."

Walter Wriston

#24. One man saying that everything is wrong can command coast-to-coast attention in living color, a power not given to an absolute monarch a century ago.

Walter Wriston

#25. Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is.

Walter Wriston

#26. If we had a truth-in Government act comparable to the truth-in-advertising law, every note issued by the Treasury would be obliged to include a sentence stating: This note will be redeemed with the proceeds from an identical note which will be sold to the public when this one comes due.

Walter Wriston

#27. Every line in the government's budget has its own constituency.

Walter Wriston

#28. When you retire you go from Who's Who to Who's That?

Walter Wriston

#29. The Doomsayers have always had their uses, since they trigger the coping mechanism that often prevents the events they forecast.

Walter Wriston

#30. I lived in San Pedro, California, which is, you know, on the west side of California, and it's where many, many Japanese lived.

Yuri Kochiyama

#31. Capital will always go where it's welcome and stay where it's well treated.
Capital is not just money. It's also talent and ideas.
They, too, will go where they're welcome and stay where they are well treated.

Walter Wriston

#32. Only as a grand gesture of defeat will men creep into the arms of the state and seek refuge in its power rather than their own courage.

Henry Wriston

#33. The guy with the competitive advantage is the one with the best technology.

Walter Wriston

#34. This is Sailor Supergirl," George says. "She knows all about black holes.

Huntley Fitzpatrick