Charles Koch Quotes

If we permit ourselves to be ill served, to be served by corrupt and incompetent and inefficient men, then on our own head must the blame rest.

Citizens who over-rely on their government to do everything not only become dependent on their government, they end up having to do whatever the government demands. In the meantime, their initiative and self-respect are destroyed.

I think there is a lot of fat in the government.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance. The New York State government was at one time a national model. Now, unfortunately, it's a national disgrace. Sometimes, the corruption in Albany could even make Boss Tweed blush.

Dependency is death to initiative, to risk-taking and opportunity. It's time to stop the spread of government dependency and fight it like the poison it is.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Everything government touches turns to crap.

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

I believe both parties are sending the wrong kind of people to Washington, D.C.

Everybody who goes into government gets somewhat chewed up in the process. Being a senior appointee is like being at a startup, only more so: You run into opposition from the entrenched oligopoly of contractors whose business model is to extract as much money from government as possible for doing as little as possible.

I have never been bribed as a Prime Minister.

It was accountability that Nixon feared.

I have found there is no difficulty in inducing men to look after their own property.

People are very apt to shift the Blame off themselves, and lay it upon others, when perhaps they themselves are as much or more to blame. The popular Cry is against Merchants and Traders, as if they had ruined the Country; or against those who are or have been in the Government

Yet all the poor commonly lay the blame on the Evil Government, excusing their own sloth, and luxury, as if their private goods forsooth were wasted by public exactions.

Show me a supposedly 'unfixable' problem in Washington, and I'll show you the political corruption standing in the way.

I understand firsthand that Washington is broken.

It's all part of the pattern. This is a story of scandal and corruption, investigations, refusals to take responsibility. If this government continues in office, this will continue.

Congress is best viewed from a distance - the farther the better - because up close, it is truly ugly.

Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself.

Foreign aid breeds kleptocracies, or governments of thieves.

There seems to be less obvious corruption in city government and New York politicians, they aren't Republican or Democrat, they're New Yorkers.

Extremely disappointed that corruption may have reached such a level in Mexico.