“We have seen that the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on. ...To undertake such new things is difficult and constitutes a distinct economic function, first, because they lie outside the routine tasks... and secondly, because the environment resists in many ways... from simple refusal either to finance or to buy a new thing, to physical attack on the man who tries to produce it. To act with confidence beyond the range of familiar beacons and to overcome that resistance requires aptitudes that are present in only a small fraction of the population and that define the entrepreneurial type as well as the entrepreneurial function. This function does not essentially consist in either inventing anything or otherwise creating the conditions which the enterprise exploits. It consists of getting things done.”
“I felt it my duty to take, and to inflict upon the reader, considerable trouble in order to lead up effectively to my paradoxical conclusion: capitalism is being killed by its achievements.”
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
“Love and hate have so blurred the results of such serious work as has so far been done on this question—it is not much—that even mere restatement of widely accepted views seemed justified here and the...”
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
“The classical theory of monopolistic pricing (the Cournot-Marshall theory) is not entirely valueless, especially when overhauled so as to deal not only with the instantaneous maximization of monopoly ...”
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
“Current economic theory is almost wholly a theory of the administration of a given industrial apparatus. But much more important than the manner in which capitalism administers given industrial struct...”
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
“Frank presentation of ominous facts was never more necessary than it is today because we seem to have developed escapism into a system of thought.”
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy