Quotes by Max Weber

“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.”

“Processes of rationalization and disenchantment engender a shift from a social order founded upon value-rational beliefs and governed through charismatic and traditional forms of authority, to an o...”

“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible un...”

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

“The final result of political action often, no regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning.”

“It is certain that there can be no work in political economy on any other than an altruistic basis... If our work is to retain any meaning it can only be informed by this: concern for the future, f...”

“... The form of leadership must be the focus of constant reappraisal. Weber states, for example: 'Each new fact may necessitate the re-adjustment of the relations between end and indispensable mean...”

“... In view of the violence of political power responsibility must always prevail. The only possible synthesis between conviction and responsibility is thus one in which passion is subordinated to ...”

“... The political leader must constantly appraise and reappraise the means through which 'he can hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him' while at the same time pursuin...”

“... Weber insists that one should not give up or lose faith in the face of this struggle. Indeed, he calls for us to engage in, rather than withdraw from, the problems of this world. He reminds us,...”

“[Concerning postmodernism:] The aim of this experimental history is to disturb the ontological security of modern identity and hence to provoke the possibility of otherness through exposition of th...”

“Rational conduct on the basis of the idea of calling, was born... from the spirit of Christian asceticism.”

“...With the failure of the imagination to present form the mind discovers that it has the capacity to conceive of the infinite, and thus has the power to transcend everything that sense can measure...”

“... Lyotard suggests that while discourse operates as a system of representation which defines meanings according to their relation to other concepts in that system, figure is the realm of the sing...”

“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 intellec...”

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

“[Art] acts as 'an instrument allowing us to see through the gaps of dominant ideologies, and the source from which new methods could be drawn in the struggle against the system(s)'.”

“In The Inhuman... Lyotard, like Weber, reminds us of the distinction between technological development and 'human' progress. He argues, in particular, that the development of technology, or 'techno...”

“Lyotard develops and extends Weber's argument regarding the disenchantment of art to suggest the Western culture increasingly obeys an instrumental logic of performance and control, one that impose...”

“... Weber insists that the value of science is always to be questioned and not simply presupposed... He is... critical of the presupposition which underlies Strauss' position, namely that scientifi...”