Explore Quotes by Joseph A. Schumpeter

Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political — legislative and administrative — decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.

The ballot is stronger than bullets.

Entrepreneurial profit is the expression of the value of what the entrepreneur contributes to production.

Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.

Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind.

The religious quality of Marxism also explains a characteristic attitude of the orthodox Marxist toward opponents. To him, as to any believer in a Faith, the opponent is not merely in error but in sin. Dissent is disapproved of not only intellectually but also morally. There cannot be any excuse for it once the Message has been revealed.

Recognition of the inevitability of comprehensive bureaucratization does not solve the problems that arise out of it.

In economic life competition is never completely lacking, but hardly ever is it perfect.

Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.

I set out to become the greatest lover in Vienna, the greatest horseman in Austria, and the greatest economist in the world. Alas, for the illusions of youth: as a horseman, I was never really first-rate.

We always plan too much and always think too little. We resent a call to thinking and hate unfamiliar argument that does not tally with what we already believe or would like to believe.

The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare—all this and more is written in its fiscal history, stripped of all phrases. He who knows how to listen to its message here discerns the thunder of world history more clearly than anywhere else.

The trouble with Russia is not that she is socialist but that she is Russia.

Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm.

Why should we stunt our ambitions and impoverish our lives in order to be insulted and looked down upon in our old age?

Nothing is so treacherous as the obvious.

Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear; the only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment.

The success of everything depends on intuition, the capacity of seeing things in a way which afterwards proves to be true, even though it cannot be established at the moment, and of grasping the essential fact, discarding the unessential, even though one can give no account of the principles by which this is done.

Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.