This civilization is rapidly passing away, however. Let us rejoice or else lament the fact as much as everyone of us likes; but do not let us shut our eyes to it.
Interpretation
Schumpeter points out that while civilization may be declining, we should acknowledge this reality instead of ignoring it.
In this quote, Joseph A. Schumpeter reflects on the transient nature of civilization, urging individuals to either celebrate or mourn its decline, but most importantly, to recognize and confront this truth rather than turning a blind eye to it. This statement prompts deep contemplation about societal changes and the acceptance of life’s impermanence.
In practice
In a discussion about societal changes, this quote can highlight the importance of facing the truth.
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.
We always plan too much and always think too little.
The function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on.
It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.
Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
Recognition of the inevitability of comprehensive bureaucratization does not solve the problems that arise out of it.
Drosselmeier had unwittingly exposed himself to an overdose of reality, and it had destroyed his reason.
Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this “something” cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It’s what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn’t count it. Nothing counts without it.
The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life.
What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than two millennia is its fundamental irrationality. It seems to make no sense, any more than malaria or meningitis makes sense.
My mother, Abra, had taught me that all people are made from the same dust. When our days here are gone, all men and women enter the same garden.
I pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.
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