Quotes from Max Weber

For bourgeois classes as such have seldom before and never since displayed heroism. It was "the last of our heroisms", as Carlyle, not without reason, has said. 

In Baxter's view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the "saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment".114 But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.

Now the history of philosophy shows that religious belief which is primarily mystical may very well be compatible with a pronounced sense of reality in the field of empirical fact; it may even support it directly on account of the repudiation of dialectic doctrines. Furthermore, mysticism may indirectly even further the interests of rational conduct.

Its entry on the scene was not generally peaceful. A flood of mistrust, sometimes of hatred, above all of moral indignation, regularly opposed itself to the first innovator.

The final result of political action often, no regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning.

Work hard in your calling.

The Puritans wanted to be men of the calling--we, on the other hand, must be.

After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings;

Das Konzept Gottes geworden in Anatolien und wurde dem Westen auferlegt.

Naïve optimists have celebrated science – that is to say: the techniques of mastering life that are based on science – as the road to happiness; but I think I may be allowed to ignore this [idea] completely, in view of Nietzsche's devastating criticism of those "ultimate men" who have "invented happiness". Who believes it, apart from a few overgrown children occupying academic or editorial chairs?

Impulsive enjoyment of life, which leads away both from work in a calling and from religion, was as such the enemy of rational asceticism, whether in the form of seigneurial sports, or the enjoyment of the dance-hall or the public—house of the common man. 

He must be stilled in order to create that deep repose of the soul in which alone the word of God can be heard. Of

Seit je hat Aufklärung im umfassendsten Sinn fortschreitenden Denkens das Ziel verfolgt, von den Menschen die Furcht zu nehmen und sie als Herren einzusetzen. Aber die vollends aufgeklärte Erde strahlt im Zeichen triumphalen Unheils. Das Programm der Aufklärung war die Entzauberung der Welt.

Today's capitalist economic order is a monstrous cosmos, into which the individual is born and which in practice is for him, at least as an individual, simply a given, an immutable shell in which he is obliged to live. It forces on the individual, to the extent that he is caught up in the relationships of the "market," the norms of its economic activity.

Para nosotros, un acto de economía "capitalista" significa un acto que descansa en la expectativa de una ganancia debida al juego de recíprocas probabilidades de cambio; es decir, en probabilidades (formalmente) pacíficas de lucro.

Material goods have gained an increasing and finally inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history.

Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is 'dehumanized', the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation.

el estado moderno es una asociación de dominación con carácter institucional que ha tratado, con éxito, de monopolizar dentro de un territorio la violencia física legítima como medio de dominación y que, a este fin, ha reunido todos los medios materiales en manos de su dirigente y ha expropiado a todos los funcionarios estamentales que antes disponían de ellos por derecho propio, sustituyéndolos con sus propias jerarquías supremas.

What kind of a man must one be if he is allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?

St. Paul's "He who will not work shall not eat" holds

Because death is meaningless, civilised life as such is meaningless.

Política como vocación). Los funcionarios con un alto sentido ético, tales como los que desgraciadamente han ocupado entre nosotros una y otra vez cargos directivos, son precisamente malos políticos, irresponsables en sentido político y por tanto desde este punto de vista, éticamente detestables.

Política como vocación) La pasión no convierte al hombre en político si no está al servicio de una «causa» y no hace de la responsabilidad para con esa causa la estrella que oriente la acción. Para eso se necesita (y esta es la cualidad psicológica decisiva para el político) la mesura, capacidad para dejar que la realidad actúe sobre uno sin perder el recogimiento y la tranquilidad.

Quien busca la salvación de su alma y la de los demás que no la busque por el camino de la política, cuyas tareas, que son muy otras, solo pueden ser cumplidas mediante la fuerza. El genio o demonio de la política vive en tensión interna con el dios del amor, incluido el dios cristiano en su configuración eclesiástica, y esta tensión puede convertirse en todo momento en un conflicto sin solución.