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A market system is not a profit system, it's a profit-and-loss system.

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
Loss
System
Profit
Market

More quotes by 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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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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I try to hire people who will challenge and have the humility to be challenged - people who have basically good values.
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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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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Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.
Charles Koch
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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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We find that when we make an acquisition, or we have a hiring experience, that's one of the hardest things to change. If you've been working for a company where you didn't dare challenge your boss, or what's politically correct in the company, then it affects your career.
Charles Koch
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That's the first rule for anybody who controls - do no harm.
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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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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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.
Charles Koch
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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.
Charles Koch
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Our vision controls the way we think and, therefore, the way we act the vision we have of our jobs determines what we do and the opportunities we see or don't see.
Charles Koch
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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.
Charles Koch
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Everything I give, pretty much, is public. Not every donor wants to - or is willing to get the kind of abuse and attacks that we do, or death threats, so they're not willing to have their names out. I think the other side is pushing for that because they want to intimidate people so they won't oppose it.
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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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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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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Most power is power to coerce somebody. We don't have the power to coerce anybody.
Charles Koch