MAX WEBER

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

'Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.

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.

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

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.'

Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.

Either one lives 'for' politics or one lives 'off' politics.

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.

It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true.

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.

Within the confines of the lecture hall, no other virtue exists but plain intellectual integrity.

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.

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

The ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility are not opposites. They are complementary to one another.

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.

All research in the cultural sciences in an age of specialization, once it is oriented towards a given subject matter through particular settings of problems and has established its methodological principles, will consider the analysis of the data as an end in itself.

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

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.

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