Now in such an age, conviction politicians may well spring up in large numbers all of a sudden, and run riot, declaring, 'The world is stupid and nasty, not I. The responsibility for the consequences cannot be laid at my door but must rest with those who employ me and whose stupidity or nastiness I…
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Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber (German: [ˈmaks ˈveːbɐ]; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, political economist and the husband of Marianne Schnitger. His ideas profoundly influenced social theory and social research. Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of sociology. Weber was a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive (rather than purely empiricist) means, based on understanding the purpose and meaning that individuals attach to their own actions. Unlike Durkheim, he did not believe in monocausality and rather proposed that for any outcome there can be multiple causes. Weber's main intellectual concern was understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and "disenchantment" that he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity, and which he saw as the result of a new way of thinking about the world. Weber is best known for his thesis combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, elaborated in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he proposed that ascetic Protestantism was one of the major "elective affinities" associated with the rise in the Western world of market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal nation-state. He argued that it was in the basic tenets of Protestantism to boost capitalism. Thus, it can be said that the spirit of capitalism is inherent to Protestant religious values. Against Marx's historical materialism, Weber emphasised the importance of cultural influences embedded in religion as a means for understanding the genesis of capitalis
The only man who has a 'vocation' for politics is one who is certain that his spirit will not be broken if the world, when looked at from his point of view, proves too stupid or base to accept what he wishes to offer it, and who, when faced with all that obduracy, can still say 'Nevertheless!'…
If we understand the matter correctly (something that must be assumed here) we can compel a person, or at least help him, to render an account of the ultimate meaning of his own actions.
It is entirely true and a fundamental fact of all history (though one we cannot explore further here) that the ultimate product of political activity frequently, indeed, as a matter of course, fails utterly to do justice to its original purpose and may even be a travesty of it.
The simplest reply was given by Tolstoy with his statement, 'Science is meaningless because it has no answer to the only questions that matter to us: What should we do? How shall we live?’ The fact that science cannot give us this answer is absolutely indisputable. The question is only in what sense…
And anyone who lacks the ability to don blinkers for once and to convince himself that the destiny of his soul depends upon whether he is right to make precisely this conjecture and no other at this point in his manuscript should keep well away from science. He will never be able to submit to what…
But this is not the situation. What lies before us is not the ‘summer’s front’ but, initially at least, a polar night of icy darkness and harshness, whichever group may outwardly turn out the victor. And when this night slowly begins to recede, how many will still be alive of all those for whom the…
For politicians, the striving for power is an unavoidable tool of their trade. Thus the ‘power instinct,’ as it is often called, belongs among their normal attributes. However, the sin against the Holy Spirit of their profession begins where this striving for power is separated from the matter in…
For the very people who think themselves called upon to be leaders are frequently the least qualified to be so.
The first task of a competent teacher is to teach his students to acknowledge inconvenient facts. By these I mean facts that are inconvenient for their own personal political views. Such extremely inconvenient facts exist for every political position.
Today is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. The ultimate and sublime have withdrawn from public life either into abstract realm of mystical life or into fraternal alliances. It's not an accident that our greatest art now is…
Academic prophecies can only ever produce fanatical sects, but never a genuine community.