At The Heart Of Capitalism

The State Has Been Living On A Revenue Which Was Being Produced In The Private Sphere For Private Purposes And Had To Be Deflected From These Purposes By Political Force. The Theory That Construes Taxes On The Analogy Of Club Dues Or Of The Purchase Of The Services Of, Say, A Doctor Only Proves How Far Removed This Part Of The Social Sciences Is From Scientific Habits Of Mind.

Profit Is The Payment You Get When You Take Advantage Of Change.

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.

The Success Of Everything Depends On Intuition, The Capacity Of Seeing Things In A Way Which Afterwards Proves To Be True, Even Though It Cannot Be Established At The Moment, And Of Grasping The Essential Fact, Discarding The Unessential, Even Though One Can Give No Account Of The Principles By Which This Is Done.

To Realize The Relative Validity Of One's Convictions And Yet Stand For Them Unflinchingly Is What Distinguishes A Civilized Man From A Barbarian.