Max Weber

Power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance.

In a democracy, the people choose their leaders, but then the leaders lead.

The disenchantment of the world is the fate of our epoch.

Science today is a 'vocation' organized in special departments of labor.

No science is fully 'objective' in the sense of freedom from presuppositions.

The individual may be free in his private life, but in his public role, he is bound by the iron rules of bureaucracy.

Ideas have, like large enterprises, their own fate.

The rational is always the historical.

To the one who calls himself a scholar, all the conditions of life become problems.

The intellectual's proper task is to uncover the roots of his own presuppositions.

Capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.

The socialism of the future will be very different from the socialism of the past.

In the last analysis, leadership is the decisive factor in politics.

The ethic of brotherliness is not a professional ethic.

Man does not by any means live off the bread he eats alone.

The concept of the 'individual' and his significance depend entirely on the cultural significance we attribute to it.

Bureaucratic administration means essentially domination through knowledge.

The pure type of charismatic authority is outside the realm of everyday routine.

Science is meaningful to the extent that it gives us the possibility of ordering our experience.

The vocation of politics presupposes a readiness to act and to take responsibility.