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Max Weber Biography

Maximilian Karl Emil "Max" Weber (/ˈveɪbər/; German: [ˈmaks ˈveːbɐ]; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, and political economist. His ideas profoundly influenced social theory and social research. Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of sociology. Weber was a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive (rather than purely empiricist) means, based on understanding the purpose and meaning that individuals attach to their own actions. Unlike Durkheim, he did not believe in monocausality and rather proposed that for any outcome there can be multiple causes.

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Max Weber Quotes

All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view.

May, Particular, Points, Reality, View, Views

Within the confines of the lecture hall, no other virtue exists but plain intellectual integrity.

Confines, Exists, Integrity, Intellectual, Lectures

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

Government, Holds, Institution, Monopoly, Politics, Use

The capacity for the accomplishment of religious virtuosos the "intellectual sacrifice" is the decisive characteristic of the positively religious man. That this is so is shown by the fact that in spite of (or rather in consequence) of theology (which unveils it) the tension between the value-spheres of "science" and the sphere of "the holy" is unbridgeable.

Decisive, Fact, Men, Religious, Sacrifice, Unveils

Daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity.

Enemy, Overcome, Politician, Reality, Vanity

For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.

Acquisition, Cells, Everyday, Monastic, Order, Perhaps

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.

Arise, Causes, Event, Events, Play, Problematical

It is not astonishing that there are many journalists who have become human failures and worthless men. Rather, it is astonishing that, despite all this, this very stratum includes such a great number of valuable and quite genuine men, a fact that outsiders would not so easily guess.

Astonishing, Genuine, Men, Numbers, Outsiders, Stratum

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Calling, Crumble, Say, Spite, Stupid, Views

Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

Distribution, Distribution Of Power, Groups, Mean, Power, States

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.

Capital, Ethos, Labor, Organization, Purpose

It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true.

Evil, Follow, Good And Evil, Opposite, Opposites

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.

Blood, Descent, Important, Memories, Physical, Similarities

Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.

Analysis, Causal, Explanation, Judgment

Ideas come when we do not expect them, and not when we are brooding and searching at our desks. Yet ideas would certainly not come to mind had we not brooded at our desks and searched for answers with passionate devotion.

Ideas, Mind, Passionate, Searching, Writing

The Truth is the Truth.

Truth, Truth Is

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.

Administration, Cost, Costs, Discretion, Subordination, Unity

The nation is burdened with the heavy curse on those who come afterwards. The generation before us was inspired by an activism and a naive enthusiasm, which we cannot rekindle, because we confront tasks of a different kind from those which our fathers faced.

Activism, Burdened, Different, Father, Tasks

Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.

Capitalism, Forever, Impulse, May, Mean, Rational

Laws are important and valuable in the exact natural sciences, in the measure that those sciences are universally valid.

Law, Important, Natural, Exact, Universally, Valid

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