A biography for Max Weberhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“As intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the world's processes become disenchanted, lose the magical significance, and henceforth simply 'are' and 'happen' but no longer signify anything.”
“One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.”
“Every type of purely direct concrete description bears the mark of artistic portrayal.”
“Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true.”
“Either one lives 'for' politics or one lives 'off' politics.”
“Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.”
“Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.”
“ההנאה האינסטינקטיבית מהחיים, שגם הסיחה את דעתה מהעבודה המקצועית והאדיקות, הייתה היריב הראשון של הסגפנות הרציונלית.”
“ביורוקרטיה מאפשרת ליישם את מטרות הארגון על פי קריטריונים אובייקטיביים בלבד.”
“מאפייני זמננו הם רציונליזציה, אינטלקטואליזציה ומעל לכול הסרת הקסם מן העולם.”
“כריזמטיות מאופיינת באדם בעל תכונות ייחודיות שמעורר ביחיד רגשות התמסרות, תלות והערצה.”
“רציונליות אינסטרומנטלית אינה בוחרת רק בין דרכים אלא גם בין מטרות שונות.”
“רציונליות מבוססת ערכים מעדיפה ערכים מסוימים על אחרים.”
“מעמד, סטטוס ומפלגה משקפים את חלוקת הכוח בחברה.”
“פעולה חברתית נחשבת ככזו רק כאשר היא מכוונת כלפי התנהגותם של אחרים.”