Joseph A. Schumpeter Men Quotations

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

To realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.

For one thing, to predict the advent of big business was considering the conditions of Marx's day an achievement in itself.

There is another method of obtaining money... It does not presuppose the existence of accumulated results of previous development, and hence may be considered as the only one which is available in strict logic. This method of obtaining money is the creation of purchasing power by banks. The form it takes is immaterial.

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.

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....

Profit is the payment you get when you take advantage of change.

Success depends on intuition, on seeing what afterwards proves true but cannot be established at the moment.