Walter Wriston Quotes

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

  Walter Wriston

  Risk, Management, Life Is

  37 Copy quote

• 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

  Driven, Wells, Wanted

  35 Copy quote
• 

  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

  Business, Blow, Organization

  85 Copy quote

• Information about money has become almost as important as money itself.

  Walter Wriston

  Important, Information

  Walter B. Wriston (2007). “Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets: The New Economic Rules of Engagement in a Wireless World”, Hoover Institution Press

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Investing, Welcome

  25 Copy quote

• Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is.

  Walter Wriston

  Failure, Crime, I Have Made Mistakes

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, People, Going Away

  21 Copy quote

• When you retire you go from Who's Who to Who's That?

  Walter Wriston

  Aging, Retiring

  1985 In the New York Times, 21 Apr.

  9 Copy quote

• We're not in cultures which support learning; we're in cultures that give us the message consistently: "Don't mess up, don't make mistakes, don't make the boss look bad, don't give us any surprises." So we're asking for a kind of predictability, control, respect, and compliance that has nothing to do with learning.

  Walter Wriston

  Mistake, Giving, Support

  10 Copy quote

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

  Walter Wriston

  Intellectual, Important, Revolution

  13 Copy quote

• Banking is a branch of the information business.

  Walter Wriston

  Banking, Branches, Information

  1986 Risk and Other Four-Letters Words.

  7 Copy quote

• The guy with the competitive advantage is the one with the best technology.

  Walter Wriston

  Technology, Guy, Advantage

  12 Copy quote

• Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.

  Walter Wriston

  Welcome, Wells, Treated

  12 Copy quote

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

  Walter Wriston

  Taxation, Pay, Used

  15 Copy quote

• A country does not go bankrupt.

  Walter Wriston

  Country, Doe, Investing

  5 Copy quote

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

  Walter Wriston

  Government, Lines, Budgets

  1986 Risk and Other Four-Letter Words.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Army, Organization, Important

  8 Copy quote

• Information about money is more important than money itself.

  Walter Wriston

  Important, Information

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Would Be, Done

  10 Copy quote

• Rising prices or wages do not cause inflation; they only report it. They represent an essential form of economic speech, sincemoney isjust another form of information.

  Walter Wriston

  Rising Prices, Essentials, Wages

  1986 Risk and Other Four-Letter Words.

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Color, Attention

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Hands, Political, Growing

  11 Copy quote

• I walk into all these organizations, and I'm always puzzled when I realize that people still want to be there. Most people really want to love their organizations. We need that level of commitment ... Yet organizations have done very little to deserve that kind of staying-power.

  Walter Wriston

  Loyalty, Commitment, Organization

  8 Copy quote

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

  Walter Wriston

  Moving, Opportunity, Long

  Walter B. Wriston (2013). “Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets: The New Economic Rules of Engagement in a Wireless World”, p.87, Hoover Institution Press

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Law, Judging, Liberty

  6 Copy quote

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