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

Categorized in : Century Taught Drink

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

Charles Koch

embrace creative challenges

My father would always say "learn everything you can and whenever you can, because you never know when it'll come in handy."

Charles Koch

handy knows father

I like to think that I try to learn something every day - and change my views, modify my views as I learn.

Charles Koch

views trying thinking

If you have methods without principles, you're going to have trouble. But if you develop methods based on principles, then you can make progress.

Charles Koch

progress principles trouble

Success is one of the worst enemies of success, because success tends to breed complacency and lack of humility.

Charles Koch

complacency worst-enemy humility

The only way you improve is to try new things.

Charles Koch

new-things trying way

I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.

Charles Koch

money business motivational

A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value.

Charles Koch

free-society vision people

Successful companies create value by providing products or services their customers value more highly than available alternatives. They do this while consuming fewer resources, leaving more resources available to satisfy other needs in society. Value creation involves making people's lives better. It is contributing to prosperity in society.

Charles Koch

business success people

If what you preach and what you do are inconsistent, your children will spot hypocrisy faster than anybody and do the opposite.

Charles Koch

hypocrisy opposites children

I don't have all the answers. I have a lot of questions. And I have some basic principles.

Charles Koch

basic-principles principles answers

I try to hire people who will challenge and have the humility to be challenged - people who have basically good values.

Charles Koch

humility challenges people

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

Charles Koch

results easy

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

Charles Koch

meaningful-work values meaningful

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.

Charles Koch

mutual-benefit jobs philosophy

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

Charles Koch

ifs

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

air discovery ideas

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.

Charles Koch

views animal ideas

When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.

Charles Koch

responsibility

My father told me "If you choose to let this money destroy your initiative and independence, then it will be a curse to you and my action in giving it to you will have been a mistake. I shall regret very much to have you miss the glorious feeling of accomplishment. Remember that often adversity is a blessing in disguise and is certainly the greatest character builder."

Charles Koch

regret mistake father