Charles Koch

The successful companies try to keep the new entrants down. Now that's great for a company like ours. We make more money that way because we have less competition and less innovation. But for the country as a whole, it's horrible.

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.

There's been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that's already legal, you'll never get it.

People who have got to know Western educational methods always claim that the reading of the Classics was a useless waste of time and should be abolished. Such chatter is to be heard from hundreds of people and cannot be stopped. But it is a serious mistake.

I haven't checked this out yet, but one of our guys told me we have a counselor within 45 minutes to an hour of most small businesses in this country. That's really powerful. I call it our bone structure.