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A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

Max Weber

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Max Weber
Age: 56 †
Born: 1864
Born: April 21
Died: 1920
Died: June 14
Anthropologist
Economist
Historian
Jurist
Lawyer
Musicologist
Philosopher
Politician
Sociologist
University Teacher
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian Weber
Max Vemper
Maks Veber
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Maximilian Karl Emil Weber
Violence
Politics
Use
Legitimate
Government
Monopoly
Institution
Holds
Institutions

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However many people complain about the red tape, it would be sheer illusion to think ... continuous administrative work can be carried out in any field except by means of officials working in offices.... The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dillettantism.
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[In] the realm of science, ... what we have achieved will be obsolete in ten, twenty or fifty years. That is the fate, indeed, that is the very meaning of scientific work. ... Every scientific fulfillment raises new questions and cries out to be surpassed rendered obsolete. Everyone who wishes to serve science has to resign himself to this
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Laws are important and valuable in the exact natural sciences, in the measure that those sciences are universally valid.
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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.
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Nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.
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Either one lives for politics or one lives off politics.
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A fully developed bureaucratic mechanism stands in the same relationship to other forms as does the machine to the non-mechanical production of goods. Precision, speed, clarity, documentary ability, continuity, discretion, unity, rigid subordination, reduction of friction and material and personal expenses are unique to bureaucratic organization.
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Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.
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The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.
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In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business.
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Charisma is the gift from above where a leader knows from inside himself what to do.
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Puritanism carried the ethos of the rational organization of capital and labor. It took over from the Jewish ethic only what was adapted to this purpose.
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The organization of ofices follows the principle of hierarchy ... each lower office is under the control and supervision of a higher one
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The decisive means for politics is violence.
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Every type of purely direct concrete description bears the mark of artistic portrayal.
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