Quotes from Charles Koch

To make a quick buck, but over time, if you're not creating value for others, customers, society, isn't going to let you be around.

In America, the first thing we have to get rid of is entitlements for the wealthy, and at the same time, open up the economy to the disadvantaged.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If somebody is doing more and more to make other people's lives better, have them make all they can, if that's what drives them, because that's what we want.

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.

When you start attacking cronyism and people's political interests, it gets nasty.

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.

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.

If people don't learn to work by the time they're in their 30s, they're never very productive.

I've had the philosophy that John Adams expressed, in the kind of system that we're trying to create in this country: that this is a system for moral people. It will work for no other.

What we need to work on is how to increase productivity. And then everybody will be better off.

From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.

The role of business is to provide products and services that make peoples lives better - while using fewer resources - and to act lawfully and with integrity.

Years later, when I asked my father, I said 'Pop, why were you so much harder on me than my younger brothers?' he said, son, you plum wore me out.