Max Weber Quotes

The fortunate is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he ‘deserves’ it, and above all, that he deserves it in comparison with others. He wishes to be allowed the belief that the less fortunate also merely experience his due. Good fortune thus wants to be ‘legitimate’ fortune.

Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the 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, and especially in its monocratic form.

Every type of purely direct concrete description bears the mark of artistic portrayal.

Whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases.[Wo immer der Mann der Wissenschaft mit seinem eigenen Werturteil kommt, das volle Verstehen der Tatsachen aufhört.]

We prefer having people in office whom we can spit upon, rather than a caste of officials who spit upon us.[Wir haben lieber Leute als Beamte, auf die wir spucken, als eine Beamtenkaste, die auf uns spuckt.]

The ultimately possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion.

The state is an association that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence.

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.

The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize ‘inconvenient’ facts.[Wenn jemand ein brauchbarer Lehrer ist, dann ist es seine erste Aufgabe, seine Schüler unbequeme Tatsachen anerkennen zu lehren.]

The politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the deadly enemy of all matter-of-fact devotion to a cause, and of all distance, in this case, of distance towards one’s self.[Einen ganz trivialen, allzu menschlichen Feind hat der Politiker täglich und stündlich in sich zu überwinden: die ganz gemeine Eitelkeit, die Todfeindin aller sachlichen Hingabe und aller Distanz, in diesem Fall: der Distanz sich selbst gegenüber.]

The organization of offices follows the principle of hierarchy; that is, each lower office is under the control and supervision of a higher one.[Das Prinzip der Amtshierarchie, d. h. die Ordnung fester Kontrollund Aufsichtsbehörden für jede Behörde mit dem Recht der Berufung oder Beschwerde von den nachgeordneten an die vorgesetzten. ]

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.