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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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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
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Level
Interests
Sphere
Becomes
Performances
Spheres
Levels
Mental
Typical
Analyzes
Within
Recognize
Primitive
Argues
Interest
Field
Citizen
Infantile
Political
Soon
Lower
Drops
Real
Fields
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Enters
Way
Citizens
Performance
Readily

More quotes by Joseph A. Schumpeter

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Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with staying in the saddle that they can't bother about where they're going.
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The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism.
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Why should we stunt our ambitions and impoverish our lives in order to be insulted and looked down upon in our old age?
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We always plan too much and always think too little.
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The metal of economic theory is in Marx's pages immersed in such a wealth of steaming phrases as to acquire a temperature not naturally its own.
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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.
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The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.
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Want and effective demand are not the same thing. If they were, the poorest nations would be the ones to display the most vigorous demand.
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Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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The ballot is stronger than bullets.
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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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Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.
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