We believe that by focusing on how to improve the lives of others, we improve our own lives as well.

The free market is the most powerful mechanism ever devised for creating wealth and improving the quality of life for all people.

Best part of my job is fulfillment. When I see that, that we’re creating value, that we’re helping improve people’s lives, and we benefit from it, so it’s a system of mutual benefit. Our philosophy’s working. That’s what turns me on. That’s what keeps me going.

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.

Subsidies and mandates are just two of the privileges that government can bestow on politically connected friends. Others include grants, loans, tax credits, favorable regulations, bailouts, loan guarantees, targeted tax breaks and no-bid contracts.

Good businesses are built on the foundation of trust, transparency, and accountability.

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.

We must measure what leads to results, not simply what is easy to measure.

I learned that unless you start working, if you’re frozen out of work, you will never learn the habits, the discipline, the values of cooperation and improvement unless you get a job, and that’s what statistic show. It’s, unless you get a job and keep it, you will not get out of poverty. If you do, you have a very good chance of working out of poverty.

Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers – not governments – to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.

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

If you want to be successful, you need to embrace failure and learn from it.

Economy is so riddled with corporate welfare and anti-competitive regulations, anti-innovation regulations. Regulations that are destroying opportunities for the disadvantaged, which is creating this two-tiered system we’re headed for which has which is destroying opportunities for the disadvantaged and creating welfare for the wealthy.

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.

In business, real jobs profitably produce goods and services that people value more highly than their alternatives. Subsidizing inefficient jobs is costly, wastes resources, and weakens our economy.

A successful life is a result of a lifelong commitment to constant learning.

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.

The poorest Americans use three time the energy as the percentage of their income as the average American does. This is going to disproportionately hurt the poor. It may make the whole electric grid unstable, depending on how it is enforced. And it does nothing for the climate.

Hubris, arrogance, is just one step ahead of loss of integrity, because if you think you’re better than other people, you know more, then you’re going to think, as many leaders have, that the rules don’t apply to them – so they lose their integrity.

The country – or the government – is headed for bankruptcy. So we’re going to be continuing to speak out against corporate welfare as something that hurts everybody except those direct beneficiaries.

Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.

Far too many businesses have been all too eager to lobby for maintaining and increasing subsidies and mandates paid by taxpayers and consumers.

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.

If you never failed, then you’re probably not doing very much.

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.

The key to long-term success is creating value for others—by focusing on their needs, desires, and objectives.

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.

My view on well-being and fulfillment comes from Maslow and positive psychology, and that is that you’re satisfying three sets of needs. First need is physiological and safety needs: Got to satisfy those first. And the second is you got to satisfy your community needs because we’re social animals, and if we don’t have that, we’re empty and we don’t have people to share knowledge and bounce things off of, and challenge ourselves. And then the third is the idea is to find a calling.

Embrace change. Envision what could be, challenge the status quo, and drive creative destruction.

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.

The most important thing in life is to live with integrity and to be true to your word.

Koch companies employ 60,000 Americans, who make many thousands of products that Americans want and need.

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.

To do meaningful work is to contribute – to create value in society.

The role of business is to provide products and services that make people’s lives better – while using fewer resources – and to act lawfully and with integrity.

The goal of a business is to create value for others. Profit is just a measure of how well we are doing that.

I don’t want to dedicate my life to getting publicity.

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.

The only way you improve is to try new things

I believe that cronyism is nothing more than welfare for the rich and powerful, and should be abolished.