Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist, historian and political economist. His ideas mainly promoted social theory and social research focused on modern western society. He has integrated sociology of economy and religion.
The most famous work of Max Weber work is “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)”. Another major work is “Politics as a vocation”. He is also known for his “bureaucracy Model”.
Some Famous Quotes and Thoughts of Max Weber
“All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view.”
“‘Culture’ is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.”
“Either one lives ‘for’ politics or one lives ‘off’ politics.”
“The fully developed bureaucratic apparatus compares with other organisations exactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production.”
“One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.”
“Homelessness is the fundamental idea of salvation in Jainism. It means the breaking off of all earthly relations, and therefore, above all, indifference to general impressions and avoidance of all worldly motives, the ceasing to act, to hope, to desire.”
“Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.”
“It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true.”
“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.”
“Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.”
“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.”
“Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs – these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration.”
“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.”
“Not everyone realises that to write a really good piece of journalism is at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar.”
“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.”
“Laws are important and valuable in the exact natural sciences, in the measure that those sciences are universally valid.”
“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.”
“Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.”
“All the analysis of infinite reality which the finite human mind can conduct rests on the tacit assumption that only a finite portion of this reality constitutes the object of scientific investigation, and that only it is ‘important’ in the sense of being ‘worthy of being known.'”
“Social economic problems do not exist everywhere that an economic event plays a role as cause or effect – since problems arise only where the significance of those factors is problematical and can be precisely determined only through the application of methods of social-economics.”
“Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.”
“One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.”
“The modern view of criminal justice, broadly, is that public concern with morality or expediency decrees expiation for the violation of a norm; this concern finds expression in the infliction of punishment on the evil doer by agents of the state, the evil doer, however, enjoying the protection of a regular procedure.”
“Within the confines of the lecture hall, no other virtue exists but plain intellectual integrity.”
“A highly developed stock exchange cannot be a club for the cult of ethics.”
“The so-called ‘materialistic conception of history,’ with the crude elements of genius of the early form which appeared, for instance, in the ‘Communist Manifesto,’ still prevails only in the minds of laymen and dilettantes.”
“It is not astonishing that there are many journalists who have become human failures and worthless men. Rather, it is astonishing that, despite all this, this very stratum includes such a great number of valuable and quite genuine men, a fact that outsiders would not so easily guess.”
“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.”
“The decisive means for politics is violence.”
“The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely essential feeling of obligation to one’s job, are here most often combined with a strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance.”
“No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrifaction, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”
“For bourgeois classes as such have seldom before and never since displayed heroism. It was “the last of our heroisms”, as Carlyle, not without reason, has said. ”
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into.”
“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.”
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on.”
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