Charles Koch Quotes
101 Charles Koch Quotes (Koch Industries Quotes)
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By instilling a work ethic in me at an early age, my father did me a big favor, although it didn’t seem like a favor back then. By the time I was eight, he made sure work occupied most of my spare time.
Charles Koch
We must measure what leads to results, not simply what is easy to measure.
Charles Koch
The most difficult and painful of all changes: A change in the way we think.
Charles Koch
Creating superior value means generating greater value from the resources consumed than alternate uses.
Charles Koch
Embrace change. Envision what could be, challenge the status quo, and drive creative destruction.
Charles Koch
Successful entrepreneurs are not deterred by their lack of authority to control resources.
Charles Koch
Prudent risk-taking should be encouraged by applying the concept of opportunity cost.
Charles Koch
[On making mistakes] I screw up a lot. Are you kidding me?
Charles Koch
Just as central planning is a failure in running government, so it is at the level of the firm.
Charles Koch
[His father] He told me at an early age that he didn't want 'no country club bum' as he facetiously put it. There was going to be no country club in my life as a boy. He started me out digging dandelions - when I was six years old - in most of my spare time. And I thought I'd soon get over that but it escalated from there.
Charles Koch
Vision for us is not a one-time statement of goals and aspirations, but a dynamic concept, always evolving based on continual examination of how we can create value for our customers and for society.
Charles Koch
The process of discovery begins when we observe, often vaguely, a gap between what is and what could be.
Charles Koch
People benefit through profit and loss according to the value they create in society.
Charles Koch
Do what you have a passion for and is most rewarding to you.
Charles Koch
In a return free market, with beneficial rules and property rights, the appropriate measure of the enterprise’s value creation is long-term profitability.
Charles Koch
We all tend to pursue our own interests, but in a true market economy we can only prosper by providing others with what they value.
Charles Koch
We don’t enter into partnerships without an exit mechanism.
Charles Koch
You've go to be honest with people. You've got to challenge. You've go to give people honest feedback .
Charles Koch
True failures, are lost opportunities, the things you should have done but didn’t.
Charles Koch
To the person with only a hammer and no understanding, every problem looks like a nail.
Charles Koch
When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.
Charles Koch
Since 1961, the year I came to work for my father, the book value of Koch Industries has increased 2000-fold (assuming reinvestment of dividends.) Unusual among large companies, Koch Industries has continued to grow rapidly and profitably as we’ve become bigger.
Charles Koch
Unusual among large companies, Koch Industries has continued to grow rapidly and profitably as we’ve become bigger. We are frequently asked how we do it. The answer is simple: MBM. We define MBM as a philosophy that enables organizations to succeed long term by applying the principles that allow free societies to prosper.
Charles Koch
Businesses’ visions must – and do – change.
Charles Koch
My father, who co-founded the company that would become Koch Industries. He exemplified much of what is centrally important to us: the value of hard work, integrity, humility and a lifelong dedication to learning.
Charles Koch
I developed two strong passions. The first was to help build a great company. The second was to identify and understand the principles that lead to prosperity and societal progress. After studying history, economics, philosophy, science psychology and other disciplines, I concluded that the two passions were strongly, indeed intimately related.
Charles Koch
I understood the natural world operated according to fixed laws… I came to realize that there were, likewise, laws that govern human well-being.
Charles Koch
Prosperity is only possible in a system where property rights are clearly and properly defined and protected, people are free to speak, exchange and contract, and prices are free to guide beneficial action.
Charles Koch
Allowing people the freedom to pursue their own interests, within beneficial rules of just conduct, is the best and only sustainable way to promote societal progress.
Charles Koch
For business to survive and prosper, it must create real long-term value in society through principled behavior.
Charles Koch
I am convinced the combination of our market based philosophy and how we practice it has been the primary source of our success.
Charles Koch
Past performance does not guarantee future success.
Charles Koch
My father, Fred C Koch, born in 1900, saw little future in Quanah or the printing business. He left to study engineering…
Charles Koch
It prompted my father to advise me to ‘never sue; the lawyers get a third, the government gets a third and you get your business destroyed.’ I’ve tried to follow his advice and have filed very few lawsuits. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell me how to keep from being sued.
Charles Koch
[On Fred C Koch’s innovative design for the Kaskade fractionation tray introduced by Koch Engineering in 1949] Koch gave up on the Kaskade design after a customer accidentally installed the tray upside down and discovered it worked better that way.
Charles Koch
My father stressed the importance of humility as well as hard work. When I arrived in Wichita, his first words to me were: ‘I hope your first deal is a loser, otherwise you will think you’re a lot smarter than you are.’ He had nothing to worry about – I got us in plenty of losers.
Charles Koch
Surprisingly, my father gave me almost complete freedom in the management of Koch Engineering. He told me I could do anything I wanted with it, short of selling it.
Charles Koch
My father carried on the engineering business by forming Koch Engineering in 1945. It was two-thirds owned by my brothers and me, and one-third by Harry Litwin, it’s president. In 1954, Harry Litwin agreed to take the engineering business and form his own company while Koch Engineering retained the Flexitray business.
Charles Koch
As the growth of our crude oil gathering business accelerated, my father’s fragile health deteriorated. In 1966 he made me president of Rock Island so that, as he put it, if something happened to him I would be in charge. In May of 1967 he had a severe heart attack and another, in November, which was fatal. We renamed Rock Island in his honor, and our company has been known as Koch Industries ever since. I was blessed to work with my father for six years until his death… At age 32, I succeeded him as chairman and CEO.
Charles Koch
Our willingness to move quickly, absorb more risk and give better service enabled us to become the leading crude oil gathering company.
Charles Koch
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