Top 159 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Koch
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American businessman Charles Koch.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Subsidies and mandates are just two of the privileges that government can bestow on politically connected friends. Others include grants, loans, tax credits, favorable regulations, bailouts, loan guarantees, targeted tax breaks and no-bid contracts.
From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.
The country - or the government - is headed for bankruptcy. So we're going to be continuing to speak out against corporate welfare as something that hurts everybody except those direct beneficiaries.
It's not going to help the country to be subsidizing uneconomical forms of energy - whether you call them 'green,' 'renewable' or whatever. In that case, the cure is worse than the disease.
I studied what principles under-laid peace and prosperity and concluded the only way to achieve societal well-being was through a system of economic freedom.
Laying the groundwork for smaller, smarter government, especially at the federal level, is going to be tough. But it is essential for getting us back on the path to long-term prosperity.
I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.
You pass a program and get people dependent on it, making it brutal to get rid of. The key is not letting it get started.
In business, real jobs profitably produce goods and services that people value more highly than their alternatives. Subsidizing inefficient jobs is costly, wastes resources, and weakens our economy.
Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers - not governments - to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.
Any of the social changes in American history are because people thought there was injustice. We have to show that this corporate welfare and cronyism is unjust - and that it's not only rigging the system so people get wealthy who don't deserve to get wealthy.
Far from trying to rig the system, I have spent decades opposing cronyism and all political favors, including mandates, subsidies and protective tariffs - even when we benefit from them.
Koch companies employ 60,000 Americans, who make many thousands of products that Americans want and need.
Far too many well-connected businesses are feeding at the federal trough. By addressing corporate welfare as well as other forms of welfare, we would add a whole new level of understanding to the notion of entitlement reform.
When a company is not being guided by the products they make and what the customers need, but by how they can manipulate the system - get regulations on their competitors, or mandates on using their products, or eliminating foreign competition - it just lowers the overall standard of living and hurts the disadvantaged the most.
The successful companies try to keep the new entrants down. Now that's great for a company like ours. We make more money that way because we have less competition and less innovation. But for the country as a whole, it's horrible.
I believe that cronyism is nothing more than welfare for the rich and powerful, and should be abolished.
The role of business is to provide products and services that make people's lives better - while using fewer resources - and to act lawfully and with integrity.
The easy way to make money is to get special political privilege. From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.
I don't want to dedicate my life to getting publicity.
When you start attacking cronyism and people's political interests, it gets nasty.
Far too many businesses have been all too eager to lobby for maintaining and increasing subsidies and mandates paid by taxpayers and consumers.
Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.
The best way to make money is to have more economic freedom, which is why we are one of the very few large companies that are consistently for it.
We are not trying to prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding. Any business that's economical, that can succeed in the marketplace, any form of energy, we're all for. As a matter of fact, we're investing in quite a number of them, ourselves - whether that's ethanol, renewable fuel oil.
People should only profit to the extent they make other peoples lives better.
If people don't learn to work by the time they're in their 30s, they're never very productive.
Do you want to have your feelings hurt a little bit because you have some negative feedback, or do you want to continue down the disastrous track you're on and have a huge disaster? Talk about a bruised ego. It may ruin your career.
When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.
I want my legacy to be greater freedom, greater prosperity and a better way of life for my family, our employees and all Americans. And I wish the same for every nation on earth.
There are now businesses and entire industries that exist solely as a result of federal patronage. Profiting from government instead of earning profits in the economy, such businesses can continue to succeed even if they are squandering resources and making products that people wouldn't ordinarily buy.
Success is one of the worst enemies of success, because success tends to breed complacency and lack of humility.
If there is wrong, you don't say we have to get rid of it gradually. If injustice exists, you need to eliminate it immediately.
Successful companies create value by providing products or services their customers value more highly than available alternatives. They do this while consuming fewer resources, leaving more resources available to satisfy other needs in society. Value creation involves making people's lives better. It is contributing to prosperity in society.
My father would always say "learn everything you can and whenever you can, because you never know when it'll come in handy."
Most power is power to coerce somebody. We don't have the power to coerce anybody.
I try to hire people who will challenge and have the humility to be challenged - people who have basically good values.
My view on well-being and fulfillment comes from Maslow and positive psychology, and that is that you're satisfying three sets of needs. First need is physiological and safety needs: Got to satisfy those first. And the second is you got to satisfy your community needs because we're social animals, and if we don't have that, we're empty and we don't have people to share knowledge and bounce things off of, and challenge ourselves. And then the third is the idea is to find a calling.
To be happy you have to fulfill your nature. That's what Aristotle taught so many centuries ago, that the road to happiness isn't to go drink more or consume more. The road to happiness is to fully develop your abilities, and then apply them to do good.
To do meaningful work is to contribute - to create value in society.
A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value.
Embrace change. Envision what could be, challenge the status quo, and drive creative destruction.
A lot of the Republican rhetoric better than the Democrats'. But when they're in office, it's pretty much the same thing. It's serving their supporters, it's corporate welfare, it's cronyism which is so destructive, particularly to the disadvantaged.
I don't have all the answers. I have a lot of questions. And I have some basic principles.
If what you preach and what you do are inconsistent, your children will spot hypocrisy faster than anybody and do the opposite.
A classical liberal is someone who wants a society that maximizes peace, civility, tolerance, and well-being for everyone. One that opens opportunities for everyone to advance themselves.
Most companies want free enterprise in general because that produces better goods and services and makes people's lives better, but they don't want it in their business. They want protection from competition, they want subsidies, they want the government to pick winners and losers, and they want to be picked as winners, and that's what we're opposing, and that's what drives my whole efforts in policy, and in the political arena.
We strive to hire and retain only those who embrace our MBM® Guiding Principles, which encompass integrity, compliance, value creation, Principled Entrepreneurship, customer focus, knowledge, change, humility, respect and fulfillment.
The poorest Americans use three time the energy as the percentage of their income as the average American does. This is going to disproportionately hurt the poor. It may make the whole electric grid unstable, depending on how it is enforced. And it does nothing for the climate.
To end cronyism we must end government's ability to dole out favors and rig the market.
If you never failed, then you're probably not doing very much.
We must measure what leads to results, not simply what is easy to measure.
If you have methods without principles, you're going to have trouble. But if you develop methods based on principles, then you can make progress.
But it [crony capitalism] erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.
Best part of my job is fulfillment. When I see that, that we're creating value, that we're helping improve people's lives, and we benefit from it, so it's a system of mutual benefit. Our philosophy's working. That's what turns me on. That's what keeps me going.
Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process.
We are on dangerous terrain when government picks winners and losers in the economy by subsidizing favored products and industries.
The only way you improve is to try new things.
I like to think that I try to learn something every day - and change my views, modify my views as I learn.
So to the best we can, what we do is focus on creating value for others, and how do we do that? We do it by trying to produce products and services that our customers will value more than their alternatives, and not just their alternatives today, but what the alternatives will be in the future. We try to more efficiently use resources than our competitors, and constantly improve in that, and we try to do the best job we can in creating a safe environment, and environmental excellence, and constantly improve at that.
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