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I don't have all the answers. I have a lot of questions. And I have some basic principles.

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
Basic
Questions
Principles
Answers

More quotes by 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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No centralized government, no matter how big, how smart or how powerful, can effectively and efficiently control much of society in a beneficial way. On the contrary, big governments are inherently inefficient and harmful.
Charles Koch
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In America, we are just moving the chairs around and spending huge amounts of money rather than having them go in making people's lives better.
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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Most power is power to coerce somebody. We don't have the power to coerce anybody.
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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The good and the bad news is that politicians rarely do what they say they are going to do when they campaign.
Charles Koch
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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.
Charles Koch
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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.
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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I have been a libertarian in my past but now I consider myself a classical liberal.
Charles Koch
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The problem is, to have prices fall would work fine if we didn't have all these built in rigidities on downward prices, because then things don't adjust, and that's how we have recessions and depressions, is prices and costs don't adjust together and they get out of whack, and we end up with dislocations.
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
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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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Our system here of creating value for others and having people do the right thing, exchange information, and so on only works if people have the right values.
Charles Koch
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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.
Charles Koch
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My father would always say learn everything you can and whenever you can, because you never know when it'll come in handy.
Charles Koch
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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.
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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Both my parents were a tremendous influence on me. My father's influence came from - he decided well, probably before we were born that as he put it, 'I'm not going to have any kids who are country club bums.'
Charles Koch