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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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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
Civilized
Conviction
Unflinchingly
Realize
Barbarian
Realizing
Distinguishes
Stand
Barbarians
Men
Validity
Convictions
Relative

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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Why should we stunt our ambitions and impoverish our lives in order to be insulted and looked down upon in our old age?
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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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.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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For the duration of its collective life, or the time during which its identity may be assumed, each class resembles a hotel or an omnibus, always full, but always of different people.
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Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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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.
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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Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stocking for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for a steadily decreasing amount of effort.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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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.
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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Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory.
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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Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with staying in the saddle that they can't bother about where they're going.
Joseph A. Schumpeter
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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.
Joseph A. Schumpeter