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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.

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
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Maximilian Karl Emil Weber
Action
Indeed
Characteristic
Government
Method
Bureaucracy
Great
Rules
Defining
General
Characteristics
Perhaps
Specific
Institutional
Cases
Fairs
Applying
Virtue
Fair
Thereby
Making
Actions
Predictable

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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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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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The career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions.
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Every type of purely direct concrete description bears the mark of artistic portrayal.
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Charisma is the gift from above where a leader knows from inside himself what to do.
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A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
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Nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.
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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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Either one lives for politics or one lives off politics.
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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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Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.
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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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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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Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.
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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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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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The experience of the irrationality of the world has been the driving force of all religious revolution.
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