Joseph Schumpeter

"One cannot understand modern business without understanding the nature of technological change."

"The entrepreneur is motivated by more than mere profit; he seeks to leave his mark on the world."

"Perfect competition is an abstraction; real markets are always characterized by some degree of monopoly power."

"The preservation of tradition often requires its revolutionary transformation."

"Authority without responsibility is corruption; responsibility without authority is powerlessness."

"The capacity to learn and adapt separates successful organizations from failed ones."

"Democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself."

"The growth of government power is often inversely proportional to individual liberty."

"Every economic act has social and cultural consequences that extend far beyond market transactions."

"The future belongs to those who can imagine what has never existed before."

"Survival of the fittest applies to ideas and institutions as much as to biological organisms."

"The accumulation of small efficiencies produces revolutionary results over time."

"Capitalism creates the conditions for its own intellectual opposition."

"The entrepreneur is the hero of the modern economy."

"What is called progress often contains the seeds of future decline."

"The price system is the only known mechanism for efficiently allocating scarce resources among competing uses."

"Education is not the filling of pails but the lighting of fires."

"Economic systems cannot be understood apart from their historical contexts."

"The great innovations are often resisted by those invested in the existing order."

"Individual ambition is the engine of social progress."

"The intellectual elite often misunderstand the economic system that sustains them."

"Profit is not the goal of business; it is the measure of success in achieving legitimate goals."

"The entrepreneur creates value; the bureaucrat merely allocates it."

"Peace is sometimes more dangerous than war because it allows for complacency and decline."

"The true revolutionary is the entrepreneur, not the political agitator."

"Civilization is maintained only through the constant effort of each generation."

"What appears to be capitalism's greatest weakness—its instability—is actually the source of its vitality."

"The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is the highest calling of the intellectual."

"Economic performance is ultimately rooted in the character and capability of people."

"The transition from feudalism to capitalism required a revolution in thought as well as in institutions."