Success Quote by Henry Kravis

The line reads like a contractor’s mantra, but it’s really a private equity veteran translating morality into risk management. Henry Kravis isn’t preaching virtue for virtue’s sake; he’s describing resilience as an engineered outcome. The repetition of “foundation” four times is the tell. He’s stacking load-bearing categories the way a deal team stacks diligence: moral, ethical, business, experience. Each one is a hedge against a different kind of collapse - reputational blowback, regulatory trouble, cash-flow failure, leadership error. It’s the language of someone who has seen companies implode not because the spreadsheet was wrong, but because the culture was.

The subtext is defensive, and intentionally so. Private equity’s public image has long been caught between “value creation” and “asset stripping.” By placing “moral and ethical” first, Kravis tries to reframe hard-nosed capitalism as something that can be disciplined, even principled. The phrase “then the building won’t crumble” implies the world is actively trying to knock your structure down: volatile markets, unforgiving media cycles, activist employees, lawmakers, social pressure. In that environment, “experience foundation” matters as much as financing, suggesting judgment is an asset class.

Contextually, this fits the post-2008 era of business leadership where trust became a balance-sheet item. It’s also a quietly pragmatic admission: in high-leverage environments, small cracks become catastrophic. Morality here isn’t a halo. It’s rebar.