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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.

Charles Koch

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Charles Koch
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: November 1
Businessman
Businessperson
Wichita
Kansas
Charles G. Koch
Charles de Ganahl Koch
Good
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Consume
Century
Abilities
Taught
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Aristotle

More quotes by Charles Koch

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We oppose all corporate welfare, whether we benefit or not. You will find that our policy positions mainly hurt our profitability rather than help it.
Charles Koch
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I like to think that I try to learn something every day - and change my views, modify my views as I learn.
Charles Koch
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You've got to learn to work with others. One of my main values is, you learn this system of mutual benefit. That is, if you shirk and you try to make the other guy do more, he's going to do that to you.
Charles Koch
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They say your genetics are going to set your direction regardless of what happens, but I think there's more to it than that.
Charles Koch
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All the corporate welfare, yeah, it goes from cash payments to debt, to regulations on the competitors, to restrictions on trade, to mandates. You name it, anything so that business doesn't have to do a better job of creating value for others - they can just get the system in their favor.
Charles Koch
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For business to survive over a long period, it needs to be contributing to society and people's well-being. Otherwise, who's going to want it? Otherwise you end up like Enron or some of these other companies.
Charles Koch
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In America, I think we just keep adding, and that's our problem. We almost never subtract. We keep adding these boondoggles, and these violations of the basic principles of equal rights - certain people have more rights than others - it's like Animal Farm. The pig says that we all have equal rights, but some have more rights than others.
Charles Koch
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If you never failed, then you're probably not doing very much.
Charles Koch
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The old idea that some genius pulls all of this stuff out of the air is ridiculous. As Ridley pointed out, the only way Edison could invent the lightbulb is because all the elements had been developed before. That's obvious it wasn't just his genius - 20 others developed it at the same time. And that's true for almost every invention and discovery.
Charles Koch
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Success is one of the worst enemies of success, because success tends to breed complacency and lack of humility.
Charles Koch
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Innovation doesn't come from one big thing, it comes from a piece at a time, from combining existing technology. We have in a sense a stagnation, in all those areas where we have cronyism and political correctness and the precautionary principle. Get all of those together, then yeah, you have stagnation, and that's what we're seeing.
Charles Koch
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How do we make people's lives better unless we find the truth of what works and what doesn't?
Charles Koch
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Just keep trying things, without really understanding the underlying fibers of well-being, or peace or civility, then you're just going to stumble from one disaster to another.
Charles Koch
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Why I've never been that fond of politics and only got into it recently kicking and screaming, because I don't think politicians are going to reverse the trajectory of this country. I think it's going to depend on the American people understanding what is fair and what makes their lives better.
Charles Koch
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You can't start taking away benefits if people don't have any opportunities.
Charles Koch
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My parents worked really hard at communicating other values they felt were important, such as integrity, courage, humility, treating others with dignity and respect, and having a thirst for knowledge.
Charles Koch
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All of our policies are based on whether it will make - enable people to improve their lives or it will make their lives worse.
Charles Koch
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Corporate welfare, I think, is a disaster for this country. It's crippling our economy. It is contributing to a permanent underclass and corrupting the business community.
Charles Koch
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We try to reward people according to the value they create, value they create in society and for the company.
Charles Koch
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I get a lot of death threats. But the way I look at it, I feel I have a moral obligation to do the best I can to make the country better for everybody, and that threatens certain people because they're going to have much less power. I want the power to go back to people making decisions over their own lives rather than some experts making it.
Charles Koch