Max Weber

...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.

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

... A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopolyof the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

As intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the world's processes become disenchanted, lose the magical significance, and henceforth simply 'are' and 'happen' but no longer signify anything.

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.

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

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.

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

Tolstoi has given the simplest answer, with the words: __cience 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 __o_ answer, and whether or not science might yet be of use to the one who puts the question correctly.

The intellect, like all cultural values, has created an aristocracy based on the possession of rational culture and independent of all personal ethical qualities of man. The aristocracy of intellect is hence an unbrotherly aristocracy.

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.

Either one lives 'for' politics or one lives 'off' politics.

Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible.

The career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions.

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

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.

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