The reason is still difficult to explain, but it is not complicated. That inner voice that will not be denied, once we learn to listen to it, had whispered since the beginning, "Business is not what your life is about. Founding VISA and being its chief executive officer is something you must do, but it's only preparatory."

The prudent course is to make an investment in learning, testing and understanding, determine how the new concepts compare to how you now operate and thoughtfully determine how they apply to what you want to achieve in the future.

An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it.

Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience.

Language was a huge expansion of that capacity to deal with information.

Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others, ever.

We are at that very point in time when a 400-year old age is rattling in its death bed and another is struggling to be born.