Max Weber

“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.”

“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.”

“Not everyone realises that to write a really good piece of journalism is at least as demanding intellectually as the achievement of any scholar.”

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

“Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.'”

“A highly developed stock exchange cannot be a club for the cult of ethics.”

“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.”

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

“One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.”