Wealth & Money Quote by William J. Clinton

Clinton’s line is a compact mission statement for the 1990s: a country pivoting from factories to fiber-optic cables, from lifetime employment to “learn as you earn,” from geopolitics to globalization. By naming “information, education, and motivation” as “everything,” he isn’t offering a neutral description of progress; he’s selling a governing philosophy that treats human capital as the nation’s competitive edge and personal responsibility as economic policy.

The triad is doing strategic work. “Information” signals the dawning Internet era and the premium on speed, data, and connectivity. “Education” translates that technological shift into an agenda item: retraining, college access, workforce development. “Motivation” is the pivot word, quietly moralizing the economy. It implies that even with access to information and schooling, the real divide is internal: drive, grit, adaptability. That’s uplifting, but it also subtly relocates blame. If the new economy rewards the motivated, then stagnation can be framed less as structural failure and more as individual shortfall.

Context matters: Clinton governed as a centrist Democrat triangulating between labor’s anxieties and business’s optimism. This rhetoric justifies free trade, deregulation-lite, and welfare reform while still sounding empathetic. It flatters the audience as self-improvers, not victims of macro forces. The brilliance is its flexibility: it can be read as a promise of opportunity or a gentle warning that security is no longer guaranteed. The cost is what goes unsaid: power, bargaining leverage, and the uneven geography of who gets to turn “information” into income.