Quotes by Max Weber

“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.”

“The experience of the irrationality of the world has been the driving force of all religious revolution.”

“One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.”

“No sociologist should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time.”

“Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.”

“Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized act.”

“Daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity.”

“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.”

The intellect, like all cultural values, has created an aristocracy based on the possession of rational culture and independent of all personal ethical qualities of man. The aristocracy of intellect is hence an unbrotherly aristocracy.

Weber,... argues that... personal bias should not preclude the scientific ascertainment of objective historical facts.

Tolstoi has given the simplest answer, with the words: ‘Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: What shall we do and how shall we live? That science does not give an answer to this is indisputable. The only question that remains is the sense in which science gives ‘no’ answer, and whether or not science might yet be of use to the one who puts the question correctly.

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.

The final result of political action often, no regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning.

It is certain that there can be no work in political economy on any other than an altruistic basis... If our work is to retain any meaning it can only be informed by this: concern for the future, for those who will come after us.

As intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the worlds processes become disenchanted, lose the magical significance, and henceforth simply are and happen but no longer signify anything.

... A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopolyof the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

Rational conduct on the basis of the idea of calling, was born... from the spirit of Christian asceticism.

Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is dehumanized, the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation.

...Material goods have gained an increasing and finally inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history.

In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, Now shut up and obey me. People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business.