Quotes about entrepreneur
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“There is no such thing as a failed soldier, dead or alive (unless he acted in a cowardly manner)—likewise there is no such thing as a failed entrepreneur or failed scientific researcher …”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 79

Dead

“If one could only fly over the Earth and show everybody, Chinese gardeners live side by side in old fashion. Next to them a capitalist germ cell which puts its feelers out into the country! See the factory chimney smoking! Ships come and go. And in the North, nomads and tribes of hunters who don’t know anything of a capitalist order even though they sell furs to entrepreneurs. A sharpened eye would be able to grasp this. All of this can be grasped and represented in pictures!”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Otto Neurath (1928), "Kolonialpolitische Aufklärung durch Bildstatistik," Arbeit und Wirtschaft, Vol. 15: p. 677 (reprinted in Neurath 1991, Bildpädagogische Schriften: 130); Translated and cited in Nikolow (2013; 88)
1920s

Fashion, Flying, Country

“It's tempting to give up—either to retreat to the ivory tower, or to start to play the policy entrepreneur game. After all, what is the use of sophisticated policy thinking or careful examination of the facts if simplistic ideas win every time?
One answer is simply that it would be wrong to give up. If the people with good ideas do not fight for them, they have no right to complain about the outcome.
But good ideas will still often lose to convenient nonsense. When that happens, every serious economist is ultimately sustained by a faith that the right ideas will eventually prevail.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Epilogue
Peddling Prosperity (1994)

People, Faith, Game, Idea

“The one version of the bourgeois comprises the artisan, the trader, the official, the financier, and the entrepreneur, all of whom, in their own way, can claim to know what labor is. Juxtaposed to them from the beginning, stands a type of bourgeois who does research, writes poetry, composes and makes music, and philosophizes and who believes that these activities develop a world that is self-sufficient. It is obvious that these two fractions of the bourgeois ego get on only superficially and come together only in the hollow connection of property and cultivation. They create the century-long tension between the good and the evil bourgeois, the idealist and the exploiter, the visionary and the pragmatist, the ideally liberated bourgeois and the laboring bourgeois. This tension remains as inexhaustible as that between the world of work and “freedom” in general.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), pp. 63-64

World, Music, Way, Freedom

“Neither Dexter nor I knew the first thing about running a small business. We were entrepreneurs the way Abbott and Costello were watercolorists. And so naturally it came to pass that Pieces of Mind was a hands-down, thumbs-up, flat-out success.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 8 (p. 170)

Way, Business, Nature, Success

“I remember an old proverb. It says that youth thinks itself wise just as drunk men think themselves sober. Youth is not wise! Youth knows nothing about life! Youth knows nothing about anything except for massive cliches which for the most part through the media of pop songs are just foisted on them by middle-age entrepreneurs and exploiters who should know better. When we start thinking that pop music is close to God, then we'll think pop music is aesthetically better than it is. And it's only the aesthetic value of pop music that we're really concerned. I mean the only way we can judge Wagner or Beethoven or any other composer is aesthetically. We don't regard Wagner or Beethoven nor Shakespeare or Milton as great teachers. When we start claiming for Lennon or McCartney or Maharishi or any other of these pop prophets the ability to transport us to a region where God becomes manifest then I see red. We're satisfied with our little long playing record, ten pop numbers or thereabouts a side. This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told: "You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it." When you're told these things you sit down with a sigh of relief: "Thank God I don't have to learn, I don't have to travel, I don't have to exert myself in the slightest. I am what I am. Youth is youth. Pop is pop. There's no need to progress. There's no need to do anything. Let us sit down, smoke our marijuana (an admirable thing in itself but not the end of anything), let us listen to our records and life has become a single moment. And the single moment is eternity. We're with God. Finis!”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Pop Music

Life, Men, God, Youth

“If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity can open up.”

C.K. Prahalad book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Source: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, 2009, p. 25

World, Thinking

“The writer, who as an engineer has spent most of his life in factories, is inclined to look at the basis for investment from a technological point of view… Consider … the class of industrial investments only… The situation is one of entrepreneurs and boards of directors considering, from time to time, various ’possibilities of investment’, such as extra lathes or looms, an extension to a factory, a venture in some completely new product, and so on. It is helpful to think of these ’opportunities for investment’ as existing, in a given situation, in great number and variety, whether they are at that moment under active consideration or not. When any such possibility is considered it is assessed in respect of ’expected profitability’. One may conveniently think of all possibilities of investment as ’quanta’ that can be placed in a schedule of small ranges of expected profitability according to these assessments. The placement of a given ’opportunity for investment’ on this schedule has some ’margin of uncertainty”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

a curious analogy with the case of the quanta of physics
Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. 103; As cited in: Prices Revalued as Information: Circuit Elements, online document 2013

Life, Thinking, Time, Help

“Young entrepreneurs tend to be fearless and have no respect for the status quo, and that’s exactly what you need in an environment where the status quo is going to put you out of business.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Forbes "Lean And Meaningful: What Founders Still Need To Fix In The 21st Century" https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilyinverso/2016/02/10/lean-and-meaningful-what-founders-still-need-to-fix-in-the-21st-century/#1a89897a2389. February 29, 2016 issue.

Business

“It goes to countries where women can work, children can read, and entrepreneurs can dream.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

As quoted by Ambassador Cameron R. Hume in a speech on U.S. Government Initiatives in South Africa http://pretoria.usembassy.gov/wwwhambhume020918.html at the American Chamber of Commerce, Johannesburg, South Africa (18 September 2002). 2000s Context: Capital is a coward. It flees from corruption and bad policies, conflict and unpredictability. It shuns ignorance, disease and illiteracy. Capital goes where it is welcomed and where investors can be confident of a return on the resources they have put at risk. It goes to countries where women can work, children can read, and entrepreneurs can dream.

Women, Children, Dreams, Reading

“Imagine discovering a continent so vast that it may have no end to its dimensions. Imagine a new world with more resources than all our future greed might exhaust, more opportunities than there will ever be entrepreneurs enough to exploit, and a peculiar kind of real estate that expands with development.”

John Perry Barlow (1947–2018) American poet and essayist

As quoted in Who Controls the Internet? : Illusions of a Borderless World (2006) by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu
Context: Imagine discovering a continent so vast that it may have no end to its dimensions. Imagine a new world with more resources than all our future greed might exhaust, more opportunities than there will ever be entrepreneurs enough to exploit, and a peculiar kind of real estate that expands with development. Imagine a place where trespassers leave no footprints, where goods can be stolen infinite number of times and yet remain in the possession of their original owners, where business you never heard of can own the history of your personal affairs...

World, Imagination, Future

“The particular interests of the entrepreneurs and capitalists also demand interventionism to protect them against the competition of more efficient and active men. The free development of the market economy is to be recommended, not in the interest of the rich, but in the interest of the masses of the people.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Ch. VII : The Economic, Social, and Political Consequences of Interventionism § 1. The Economic Consequences https://fee.org/resources/interventionism-an-economic-analysis-2#economic Interventionism: An Economic Analysis https://fee.org/resources/interventionism-an-economic-analysis/ (1940) Context: The unhampered market economy is not a system which would seem commendable from the standpoint of the selfish group interests of the entrepreneurs and capitalists. It is not the particular interests of a group or of individual persons that require the market economy, but regard for the common welfare. It is not true that the advocates of the free-market economy are defenders of the selfish interests of the rich. The particular interests of the entrepreneurs and capitalists also demand interventionism to protect them against the competition of more efficient and active men. The free development of the market economy is to be recommended, not in the interest of the rich, but in the interest of the masses of the people.

Men, People

“Sometimes people ask me who are the future leaders of Iran… I say I don't know who they are, but I know that they exist by the thousands. They are the artists and engineers; they are poets and businessmen; they are entrepreneurs and they are there -- waiting to inherit this future… And it is, by God, our obligation, our duty to the nation, to help them the best way possible to minimize the toll and the cost of change.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Peter Godspeed, 'It is my duty' http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=462&page=2, Canada National Post, September 24, 2010. Interviews, 2010

God, People, Way, Change

“I see myself as a classic middle market entrepreneur, and this is the role I fulfil.”

Niki Lauda (1949–2019) Austrian former Formula 1 racing driver

“The natural tendency of the market is to increase the scope of the social relations that it covers, because entrepreneurs see opportunities at the edge to turn what is not yet a commodity into one. Left to itself, the capitalist dynamic is self-sustaining, and socialists therefore need the power of organized politics to oppose it: their capitalist opponents, who go with the grain of the system, need that power less”

Gerald Cohen (1941–2009) Canadian philosopher

which is not to say that they lack it!
V. Coda
Why Not Socialism? (2009)

Self-confidence, Relation ships, Nature

“Generally speaking, under capitalism, the ownership of capital is separate from the application of capital to production; money capital is separate from industrial or productive capital; the rentier, living entirely on income obtained from money capital, is separated from the entrepreneur and from all those directly concerned in the management of capital.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Three

Money

“In the case of the Extravaganza of the Seas, the owner of record was a man named Bobby Kemp, who was usually described in the newspaper as a millionaire entrepreneur. Kemp liked the look of that, entrepreneur, although he personally could not pronounce it.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Novels, Tricky Business (2002), Chapter 2

Personality, Sea

“Take one part brilliant entrepreneur, one part narcissist, add in a smattering of Attention Deficit Disorder and a dash of philanthropy and you get Dov Charney.”

Dov Charney (1969) Canadian-born U.S. based fashion designer/businessman

Spunt, Alexandra (2003). "Mr. No Logo" http://web.archive.org/20030923021858/www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2003/082803/style.html MontrealMirror.com (accessed August 7, 2006)

Parting

“Artists are entrepreneurs. They are willing to stake everything for the chance to go it alone and make the work they feel compelled to create. They will beg and borrow to pay the rent on their studio, to buy the necessary materials, and to feed themselves during the long months of endeavor.”

Will Gompertz (1965) British journalist

Think Like an Artist (2015)

Chance, Making love, Feeling

“Within a few short years, without a shot's being fired, the concept of holistic health has been legitimized by federal and state programs, endorsed by politicians, urged and underwritten by insurance companies, co-opted in terminology (if not always in practice) by many physicians, and adopted by medical students. Consumers demand "holistic health," a whole new assortment of entrepreneurs promise it, and medical groups look for speakers to explain it.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves, p. 242

Health

“An Entrepreneur knows how to build a business from multiple failures.”

Akshay Makadiya (1993) an Entrepreneur and Founder of RankLane

In a speech given on 12 March 2013, at the Google Business Groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Business_Groups, Rajkot.

Business, Failure

“What I fear is a new direction for the president and his administration and what could very likely be a catastrophe for the working men and women, small business and entrepreneurs, our middle class, the American family, the very people this president has represented from the moment he announced he would run for the presidency.
That Mr. Trump would advance the interest of the globalist elites ahead of our citizens would be a tragic reversal on any day,
But today, on the same day the Commerce Department reported the United States had the largest trade deficit in our history ... it all means the White House has simply lost its way.
The nation’s heart will be, after all, broken by the very same people who brought 50 years of consecutive trade deficit and the export of millions of middle-class jobs and who have fed the swamp for decades”

Lou Dobbs (1945) American Television Host

6 March 2019 episode of Donahue Tonight on Fox Business Network https://twitter.com/LouDobbs/status/1103453101036658688, reported on 7 March 2019 by The Hill https://thehill.com/homenews/media/432993-lou-dobbs-trump-white-house-has-lost-its-way

Family, Housing, History, Business