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.

Corporate welfare, I think, is a disaster for this country. It's crippling our economy. It is contributing to a permanent underclass and corrupting the business community.

Our system here of creating value for others and having people do the right thing, exchange information, and so on only works if people have the right values.

The role of business is to provide products and services that make peoples lives better - while using fewer resources - and to act lawfully and with integrity.

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.

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.

If people are teaching economics, they need to teach all the different disciplines, all the different schools in economics. They can't just teach one because then the person isn't equipped to deal with the economics profession.