Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Max Weber

Image
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.
Max Weber
Image
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.
Max Weber
Image
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.
Max Weber
Image
The organization of ofices follows the principle of hierarchy ... each lower office is under the control and supervision of a higher one
Max Weber
Image
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.
Max Weber
Image
Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.
Max Weber
Image
Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.
Max Weber
Image
[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
Max Weber
Image
Laws are important and valuable in the exact natural sciences, in the measure that those sciences are universally valid.
Max Weber
Image
Every type of purely direct concrete description bears the mark of artistic portrayal.
Max Weber
Image
Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.
Max Weber
Image
Daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity.
Max Weber
Image
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.
Max Weber
Image
All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view.
Max Weber
Image
A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Max Weber
Image
Either one lives for politics or one lives off politics.
Max Weber
Image
The experience of the irrationality of the world has been the driving force of all religious revolution.
Max Weber
Image
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.
Max Weber
Image
The decisive means for politics is violence.
Max Weber
Image
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.
Max Weber