Joseph Schumpeter

"Economic performance ultimately rests on entrepreneurial performance."

"The entrepreneur is never a risk taker in the sense that he gambles, but a calculator of probabilities."

"The function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production."

"Capitalism is being killed by its achievements."

"The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity."

"Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship."

"In the analysis of economic phenomena, the three most important things are change, change, and change."

"The world, as we know it, is the product of the productive efforts of all the men and women who lived before us."

"Most of the phenomena of economic life are not susceptible to theoretical analysis."

"Socialists always think that the trouble with capitalism is capitalism, when the trouble is that it is not capitalism."

"The bourgeoisie, in its own interest, creates conditions that inexorably lead to its destruction."

"Ideas and the force of their appeal can reshape the world, and those who have great ideas shape the course of civilization."

"The modern mind dislikes anything that cannot be used for something else."

"To economists, a situation is any sequence of events that seems important to the analyst."

"The problem is that we cannot evaluate in terms of money values anything that transcends the commercial sphere."

"Perfect competition is not only impossible but inferior, and has always been so from the standpoint of real effectiveness and efficiency."

"The carrying out of new combinations is the only kind of action that is, for the purpose of dynamic economics, fundamentally important."

"One never knows when the day will come, but it surely will come when someone will say something that will make you say: Why did I not see that before?"

"In every act of creation, there is a spark of destruction."

"The truth is that all the characteristics of modern life depend upon them and would collapse within twenty-four hours if they stopped working."

"A functioning organism must be ready to be remade at any moment."

"People think that there is a shortage of vision, but there is simply a lack of understanding of how the world actually works."

"The great tradition of European culture cannot be and should not be preserved or restored."

"There are no absolute historical truths, only interpretations that change over time."

"The first thing to recognize is that even the most perfect capitalism is subject to criticism."

"Profit is the excess of the value of goods over their cost, but this is not the origin of entrepreneurial income."

"Man's place in the machine is bound to be, in the long run, more and more subject to the forces of production."

"The man who combines the preparation with the opportunity is the man who succeeds."

"Uncontrolled competition is rarely possible and often undesirable from a social standpoint."

"The source of economic progress lies in the breaking of the circular flow by the introduction of new combinations."