Success Quote by Lewis Thompson Preston

A banker’s version of a moral aphorism, this line is engineered to make restraint sound like leadership. “Quality” versus “quantity” isn’t just a preference; it’s a rebuke to an industry habit of mistaking volume for virtue. Preston, a businessman who rose to the top of global finance, is implicitly arguing that lending is not a neutral spigot you turn on to prove growth. It’s judgment, and judgment carries consequences.

The phrasing does a quiet rhetorical trick: it reframes risk management as a higher calling. “Quantity of lending” evokes brag-worthy metrics - bigger portfolios, faster disbursement, more headlines. “Quality of lending” suggests something slower and less sexy: underwriting discipline, borrower capacity, purpose, repayment realism. In other words, the unglamorous work that prevents a credit boom from becoming a credit hangover.

In context, the sentiment reads as both caution and self-justification. Institutions like the World Bank and major commercial lenders live under constant pressure to “do more” - more projects, more capital deployed, more visible impact. Preston’s subtext is that indiscriminate lending can be a kind of soft corruption: it buys short-term applause while exporting long-term instability to borrowers and balance sheets alike. The line also signals a political awareness: bad lending isn’t merely a technical failure, it’s a trust failure. When loans sour, the bill arrives as austerity, resentment, and skepticism about the legitimacy of financial expertise.

It’s a compact defense of stewardship in a culture that rewards speed, scale, and quarterly proof.