Top 33 Quotes & Sayings by Walter Wriston

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American businessman Walter Wriston.

Last updated on September 18, 2024.

Walter Bigelow Wriston was a banker and former chairman and CEO of Citicorp. As chief executive of Citibank / Citicorp from 1967 to 1984, Wriston was widely regarded as the single most influential commercial banker of his time. During his tenure as CEO, the bank introduced, among other innovations, automated teller machines, interstate banking, the negotiable certificate of deposit, and "pursued the credit card business in a way that no other bank was doing at the time". With then New York Governor Hugh Carey and investment banker Felix Rohatyn, Wriston helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the mid-1970s by setting up the Financial Control Board and the Municipal Assistance Corporation, and persuading the city's union pension funds and banks to buy the latter corporation's bonds.

American - Businessman | August 3, 1919 - January 19, 2005

Source: Wikipedia

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

Judgment comes from experience - and experience comes from bad judgment.

Walter Wriston

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

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

Walter Wriston

Information about money is more important than money itself.

Walter Wriston

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

Walter Wriston

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

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

Walter Wriston

The information revolution has changed people's perception of wealth. We originally said that land was wealth. Then we thought it was industrial production. Now we realize it's intellectual capital. The market is showing us that intellectual capital is far more important that money. This is a major change in the way the world works. the same thing that happened to the farmers during the Industrial Revolution is now happening to people in industry as we move into the information age.

Walter Wriston

It is a maxim of cryptology that what one man can devise, another can unravel. This principle keeps armies of tax lawyers and accountants employed, but adds nothing to our national productivity.

Walter Wriston

Risk is not a dirty word.

Walter Wriston

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

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

Walter Wriston

A truly global economy, as opposed to the multinational economy of the recent past, will require concessions of national power ... that seemed impossible a few years ago and which even now we can but partly imagine.

Walter Wriston

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

Walter Wriston

A country does not go bankrupt.

Walter Wriston

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

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

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

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

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

Walter Wriston

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

Banking is a branch of the information business.

Walter Wriston

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

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

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

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

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

Walter Wriston

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

Walter Wriston

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

Walter Wriston

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

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

Walter Wriston

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

Walter Wriston