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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.

Joseph A. Schumpeter

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Joseph A. Schumpeter
Age: 67 †
Born: 1883
Born: February 8
Died: 1950
Died: June 21
Anthropologist
Book Collector
Economist
Jurist
Political Scientist
Professor
Mexico City
Mexico
Josef Aloys Schumpeter
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
Ends
Hence
Certain
Incapable
Decisions
Administrative
Method
Institutional
Type
Legislative
Democracy
Arrangement
Decision
Arriving
Political
Arrangements

More quotes by Joseph A. Schumpeter

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The trouble with Russia is not that she is socialist but that she is Russia.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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To the believer Marxism presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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To realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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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.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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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.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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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.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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The perennial gale of creative destruction
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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It is quite possible that future generations will look upon arguments about the inferiority of the socialist plan as we look upon Adam Smith's argument about joint stock companies which, also, were simply false.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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Those revolutions are not strictly incessant they occur in discrete rushes which are separated from each other by spans of comparative quiet. The process as a whole works incessantly however, in the sense that there always is either revolution or absorption of the results of revolution, both together forming what are known as business cycles.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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Pessimistic visions about almost anything always strike the public as more erudite than optimistic ones
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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All we can thus far say about the duration of the units of [the business cycle] and each of [its] two phases is that it will depend on the nature of the particular innovations that carry a cycle,... and the financial conditions and habits prevailing in the business community in each case.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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Lack of outlets, excess capacity, complete deadlock, in the end regular recurrence of national bankruptcies and other disasters-perhaps world wars from sheer capitalist despair-may confidently be anticipated. History is as simple a that.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes primitive again.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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For one thing, to predict the advent of big business was considering the conditions of Marx's day an achievement in itself.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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We always plan too much and always think too little.
Joseph A. Schumpeter