Latest Charles Koch Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

  Jobs, Names, Creating Value

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• You can't start taking away benefits if people don't have any opportunities.

  Charles Koch

  Opportunity, People, Benefits

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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

  America, Firsts, Entitlement

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• If Hillary Clinton had policies that would more likely make people's lives better than Republicans, I'd be for Hillary. I'm for whoever will do that. I couldn't care less.

  Charles Koch

  People, Care, Republican

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• A lot of what is done by the climate lobby is anti-science. But there is some science behind it. Like, there are greenhouse gases, and they do contribute to warming. But if you look at the last, say, 160 years, the first 80 of that period, they went up about four-tenths of a degree. And now, the second 80 that CO2 has increased by, what, 30 percent or something, it's gone up five-tenths of a degree. And there's been in the last 30 or 40 years, there's been no real increase in storms or bad weather.

  Charles Koch

  Real, Years, Weather

  "What Charles Koch really thinks about climate change". Interview with Jim Tankersley, www.washingtonpost.com. June 6, 2016.

• I agree with George Washington's concern about parties: They become an end in themselves, rather than being committed to helping people improve their lives.

  Charles Koch

  Party, People, Helping

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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

  Technology, Political, Innovation

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• Innovation comes from recombining existing technology and different perspectives in innovative ways.

  Charles Koch

  Technology, Perspective, Innovation

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• We create these boom-bust cycles by manipulating the money supply and the interest rates and directing it where it went in. And that is what happened with housing: pushed into housing combination of easy money plus all the regulations, and we created this boom-bust cycle, and corruption, because corruption goes with it, because you don't have the same discipline. So we've got to stop all that.

  Charles Koch

  Discipline, Regulation, Corruption

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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

  Fall, Together, Cost

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• Let's say I am a chocoholic and I eat tons of chocolate a day. A hundred thousands of tons a day. I have this craving, but I can't afford it, so I get a printing press, and I start printing money, and I print billions and billions to buy chocolate. So I create this boom in the chocolate industry, so stores are running out of chocolate. So they have demand, so chocolate makers expand. Cocoa growers expand. You create this great boom. But now the feds arrest me and shut me down. And now there is a depression in the chocolate industry. That's what happens with the monetary policy.

  Charles Koch

  Running, Printing Money, Chocolate

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• If we are going to have a Fed, it should not fall into the tyranny of experts with the a fatal conceit that a few wise people can determine interest rates. Interest rates should be driven by the market, and people's time preference, and we see these boom-bust cycles.

  Charles Koch

  Wise, Fall, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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

  Moving, America, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I don't like the idea of capitalism anyway. Because it's not capital we are talking about; it's knowledge and creating well-being. Because I mean, that gets people on the wrong track when it's capital and how we allocate capital - no. How do we create the Republic of Science in America? How do we have a system of mutual benefits where people succeed by helping others improve their lives? So I don't like that at all.

  Charles Koch

  Mean, Helping Others, Mutual Benefit

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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.

  Charles Koch

  People, Want, Ifs

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I've always believed in the saying that "there is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."

  Charles Koch

  Credit, Care, Limits

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• The good and the bad news is that politicians rarely do what they say they are going to do when they campaign.

  Charles Koch

  Campaigns, News, Politician

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• Just Donald Trump's tenor and insulting of people is just beyond the pale.

  Charles Koch

  People, Insulting, Trump

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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

  Animal, Thinking, Rights

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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

  Charles Koch

  Loss, Profit, Profit And Loss

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I'd like to see a rebirth of America - go back where there's equal rights for everybody and that people succeed to the extent that they help other people improve their lives. To lead toward a society that maximizes peace, civility, and well-being for everyone.

  Charles Koch

  Helping Others, Rights, America

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• The Declaration of Independence was only partially applied for women and for certain immigrants such as the Chinese. And it wasn't applied to get rid of corporate welfare and cronyism. People who had special connections got special deals from the beginning. So all of those violations of what the Declaration of Independence expressed, have led to the problems we have today. So, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons for seven generations, or much longer. Forever.

  Charles Koch

  Father, Son, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I think our biggest problem in society is we're headed more and more toward a two-tiered society. That is, creating welfare for the wealthy and destroying opportunities for the disadvantaged.

  Charles Koch

  Opportunity, Thinking, Two

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• America was the first country in history to be founded on, people have rights. Not the divine right of kings, not the emperor's a god, or idolized, or we have to do what the dear leader says. And, expressly, that it's a system of equal rights, and then governments are instituted to secure those rights.

  Charles Koch

  Country, Kings, Rights

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• People are interested in certain ideas, in certain periods, and then that moves, and okay, now people are more interested in studying this, and there is no perfect balance, and how would you know what the perfect balance is? I mean, what does it mean to have too many Beethoven chairs and too few Stravinsky chairs? I mean, that's kind of a value judgment that isn't really based on humility. We don't know what the optimum number is, so let people figure this out on their own. People are more interested in Beethoven than Stravinsky? Great! Why would that bother me?

  Charles Koch

  Moving, Mean, Humility

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com