Max Weber Quotes

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  • The career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions.

    Max Weber (2009). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.115, Routledge
  • Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.

  • All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view.

    Reality   Views   May  
    Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.117, Lulu Press, Inc
  • Ideas come when we do not expect them, and not when we are brooding and searching at our desks. Yet ideas would certainly not come to mind had we not brooded at our desks and searched for answers with passionate devotion.

    Writing   Ideas   Mind  
    Max Weber (2009). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.136, Routledge
  • For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.

    Cells   Order   Everyday  
    The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ch. 5 (1920) (translation by Talcott Parsons)
  • Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.

    Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.115, Lulu Press, Inc
  • The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.

    Max Weber (2013). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.155, Routledge
  • It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but appal him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small personal commentarie to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains, unless he knows himself to be called and gifted to give them expression in artistic or prophetic form. In most other cases, the voluminous talk about intuition does nothing but conceal a lack of perspective toward the object, which merits the same judgement as a similar lack of perspective toward men.

    Destiny   Men   Sight  
    Max Weber (1930). “The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism”
  • The great virtue of bureaucracy - indeed, perhaps its defining characteristic ~ was that it was an institutional method for applying general rules to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and predictable.

  • Laws are important and valuable in the exact natural sciences, in the measure that those sciences are universally valid.

    Law   Important   Natural  
    Max Weber, Edward Shils, Henry A. Finch (1949). “The methodology of the social sciences”, Free Pr
  • The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars.

    Artist   Soldier   Gains  
    1904-5 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (translated by Talcott Parsons,1930).
  • One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

    Max Weber (2009). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.115, Routledge
  • Nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.

    Max Weber (2009). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.135, Routledge
  • The purely emotional form of Pietism is, as Ritschl has pointed out, a religious dilettantism for the leisure class.

    Max Weber (1952). “The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit Of Capitalism”, p.84, Vani Prakashan
  • A highly developed stock exchange cannot be a club for the cult of ethics.

    Clubs   Ethics   Cult  
  • Every scientific fulfillment raises new questions; it asks to be surpassed and outdated.

    Max Weber (1968). “On Charisma and Institution Building”, p.298, University of Chicago Press
  • Only on the assumption of belief in the validity of values is the attempt to espouse value-judgments meaningful. However, to judge the validity of such values is a matter of faith .

    Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.81, Lulu Press, Inc
  • The fate of an epoch that has eaten of the tree of knowledge is that it must...recognize that general views of life and the universe can never be the products of increasing empirical knowledge, and that the highest ideals, which move us most forcefully, are always formed only in the struggle with other ideals which are just as sacred to others as ours are to us.

    Struggle   Moving   Fate  
    Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.84, Lulu Press, Inc
  • Every type of purely direct concrete description bears the mark of artistic portrayal.

    Bears   Artistic   Type  
    Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.151, Lulu Press, Inc
  • Daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity.

    Reality   Vanity   Enemy  
    Max Weber (2013). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.116, Routledge
  • A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

  • The summum bonum of this [Puritan] ethic is the earning of more and more money combined with the strict avoidance of all enjoyment.

    Max Weber (2012). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.53, Courier Corporation
  • Not everyone realises that to write a really good piece of journalism is at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar.

    Max Weber, David S. Owen (2004). “The Vocation Lectures”, p.55, Hackett Publishing
  • Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.

    Mean   Forever   May  
    Max Weber (2012). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.17, Courier Corporation
  • specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.

    Max Weber (2012). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.182, Courier Corporation
  • Within the confines of the lecture hall, no other virtue exists but plain intellectual integrity.

    Max Weber, John Dreijmanis (2008). “Max Weber's Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations”, p.52, Algora Publishing
  • 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.

    Art   Philosophy   Fate  
    Max Weber (2013). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.155, Routledge
  • Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.

  • [In] the realm of science, ... what we have achieved will be obsolete in ten, twenty or fifty years. That is the fate, indeed, that is the very meaning of scientific work. ... Every scientific "fulfillment" raises new "questions" and cries out to be surpassed rendered obsolete. Everyone who wishes to serve science has to resign himself to this.

    Max Weber, David S. Owen, Tracy B. Strong (2004). “The Vocation Lectures”, p.11, Hackett Publishing
  • The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize 'inconvenient' facts - I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions.

    Teacher   Party   Mean  
    Max Weber (2009). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.147, Routledge
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 63 quotes from the Sociologist Max Weber, starting from April 21, 1864! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    Max Weber quotes about: Ethics Fate Politicians Politics Reality Values Virtue

    Max Weber

    • Born: April 21, 1864
    • Died: June 14, 1920
    • Occupation: Sociologist