Walter Wriston
Walter Wriston
Walter Bigelow Wristonwas a banker and former chairman and CEO of Citicorp. As chief executive of Citibank / Citicorpfrom 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth3 August 1919
CountryUnited States of America
Walter Wriston quotes about
Judgment comes from experience - and experience comes from bad judgment.
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.
Risk is not a dirty word.
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.
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.
As long as capital-both human and money-can move toward opportunity, trade will not balance.
Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is.
The information revolution has changed wealth. Intellectual capital is far more important than money.
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.
Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.
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.
When you retire you go from Who's Who to Who's That?
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.
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.