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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
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Sociologist
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Maximilian Carl Emil Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian Weber
Max Vemper
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Maximilian Karl Emil Weber
Government
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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Those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration this belief must be important for group formation furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.
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Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.
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It is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true.
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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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Daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.
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The great virtue of bureaucracy - indeed, perhaps its defining characteristic ~ was that it was an institutional method for applying general rules to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and predictable.
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The experience of the irrationality of the world has been the driving force of all religious revolution.
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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] 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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All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view.
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Only on the assumption of belief in the validity of values is the attempt to espouse value-judgments meaningful. However, to judge the validity of such values is a matter of faith .
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Charisma is the gift from above where a leader knows from inside himself what to do.
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