Quotes from Max Weber

That in East Prussia Frederick William I tolerated the Mennonites as indispensable to industry

It is certain that there can be no work in political economy on any other than an altruistic basis... If our work is to retain any meaning it can only be informed by this: concern for the future, for those who will come after us.

Cada persona tiene que conocer cuál es el dios o el demonio que maneja los hilos de su vida.

In [Richard] Baxter's view, concern for outward possessions should sit lightly on the shoulders of his saints 'like a thin cloak which can be thrown off at any time.' But fate decreed that the cloak should become a shell as hard as steel.

But the person who can do this must be a leader; not only that, he must, in a very simple sense of the word, be a hero.

Where 'doing one's job' cannot be directly linked to the highest spiritual and cultural values--although it may be felt to be more than mere economic coercion--the individual today usually makes no attempt to find any meaning in it. Where capitalism is at its most unbridled, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, divested of its metaphysical significance, today tends to be associated with purely elemental passions, which at times virtually turn it into a sporting contest.

One may attain salvation in any walk of life; on

Consequently, if one's luck is bad, one is liable to be increasingly consumed by feelings of resentment toward the agent or agents that one holds responsible for one's victimhood, and this twisting of one's soul in bitterness is a form of damage that the acknowledgment of the real conditions of academic life could have helped one to avoid or, at the very least, mitigate.

In practice this means that God helps those who help themselves . Thus

Weber,... argues that... personal bias should not preclude the scientific ascertainment of objective historical facts.

Ein Berufsmensch ohne Geist, Genussmensch ohne Herz, dieses Nichts bildet sich ein, die Krone der Schöpfung zu sein.

Rational conduct on the basis of the idea of calling, was born... from the spirit of Christian asceticism.

o capitalismo atual, que se desenvolveu a ponto de dominar a vida econômica, educa e seleciona os sujeitos econômicos de que precisa por um processo de sobrevivência econômica dos mais bem adaptados.

Calvinism, in comparison, appears to be more closely related to the hard legalism and the active enterprise of bourgeois-capitalistic entrepreneurs. Finally

Weber's achievement was not to definitively answer a riddle but to stake out a territory fertile of new puzzles at the heart of which is the claim that religious forces, not simply economic ones, paved the way for the mentality characteristic of modern, Western capitalism.

Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings" (Prov. xxii. 29).

Für die Politik ist das entscheidende Mittel: die Gewaltsamkeit.

The earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long as it is done legally, the result and the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling; and this virtue and proficiency are, as it is now not difficult to see

The numerous gods of yore, divested of their magic and hence assuming the shape of impersonal forces, arise from their graves, strive for power over our lives, and resume their eternal struggle among themselves.

Wesley's anti-Calvinistic faction within the movement with its doctrine that grace could be lost. The

A number of those sections of the old Empire which were most highly developed economically and most favored by natural resources and situation, in particular a majority of the wealthy towns went over to Protestantism in the sixteenth century The results of that circumstance favor the Protestants even today in their strug gle for economic existence.

Politik« würde für uns also heißen: Streben nach Machtanteil oder nach Beeinflussung der Machtverteilung, sei es zwischen Staaten, sei es innerhalb eines Staates zwischen den Menschengruppen, die er umschließt.

Tolstoi has given the simplest answer, with the words: 'Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: "What shall we do and how shall we live?"' That science does not give an answer to this is indisputable. The only question that remains is the sense in which science gives 'no' answer, and whether or not science might yet be of use to the one who puts the question correctly.

All theology represents an intellectual rationalization of the possession of sacred values... Every theology... presupposes that the world must have a meaning, and the question is how to interpret this meaning so that it is intellectually conceivable.