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Max Weber Quotes

Total quotes: 9
“For the very people who think themselves called upon to be leaders are frequently the least qualified to be so.”
— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures: “Science as a Vocation" & "Politics as a Vocation"(Hackett Classics)
Tagged: Leadership
“The modern person seems generally unable to imagine how large a significance those components of our consciousness rooted in religious beliefs have actually had upon culture, national character, and the organization of life.”
— Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Tagged: Secular Theology, The Forces That Make Us, The Underpinning of Religion
“If we understand the matter correctly (something that must be assumed here) we can compel a person, or at least help him, to render an account of the ultimate meaning of his own actions.”
— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures
Tagged: Direction, Identity, Management, Meaning
“It is entirely true and a fundamental fact of all history (though one we cannot explore further here) that the ultimate product of political activity frequently, indeed, as a matter of course, fails utterly to do justice to its original purpose and may even be a travesty of it.”
— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures
Tagged: History, Politics, Theory and Practice, Unforeseen Consequences
“The first task of a competent teacher is to teach his students to acknowledge inconvenient facts. By these I mean facts that are inconvenient for their own personal political views. Such extremely inconvenient facts exist for every political position.”
— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures
Tagged: Teaching, Addressing The Complexity of the World, Students, College, Learning, Openness, Addressing Things From Different Angles
“The only man who has a 'vocation' for politics is one who is certain that his spirit will not be broken if the world, when looked at from his point of view, proves too stupid or base to accept what he wishes to offer it, and who, when faced with all that obduracy, can still say 'Nevertheless!' despite everything.”
— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures
Tagged: Ethics, Neverthless, How To Live, My Philosophy
“But this is not the situation. What lies before us is not the ‘summer’s front’ but, initially at least, a polar night of icy darkness and harshness, whichever group may outwardly turn out the victor. And when this night slowly begins to recede, how many will still be alive of all those for whom the spring had seemed to bloom so gloriously? And what will have become of you all inwardly?”
— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures: “Science as a Vocation" & "Politics as a Vocation"
Tagged: In The Future: Pain, What Is Ahead Of Us, Here Comes The Night, The Night After The Revolution
“The simplest reply was given by Tolstoy with his statement, 'Science is meaningless because it has no answer to the only questions that matter to us: What should we do? How shall we live?’ The fact that science cannot give us this answer is absolutely indisputable. The question is only in what sense does it give 'no' answer, and whether or not it might after all prove useful for somebody who is able to ask the right question.”
— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures
Tagged: Epistemology, Knowledge, Liberal Arts, Science
“And anyone who lacks the ability to don blinkers for once and to convince himself that the destiny of his soul depends upon whether he is right to make precisely this conjecture and no other at this point in his manuscript should keep well away from science. He will never be able to submit to what we may call the 'experience' of science. In the absence of this strange intoxication that outsiders greet with a pitying smile, without this passion, this conviction that 'millennia had to pass before you were born, and millennia more must wait in silence' to see if your conjecture will be confirmed— without this you do not possess this vocation for science and should turn your hand to something else. For nothing has any value for a human being as a human being unless he can pursue it with passion.”
— Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures
Tagged: Intellectualism, Passion, Vocation
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