'Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.
Max WeberRead
A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote explains the role of government as the sole authority that can use force legitimately.
Max Weber's quote highlights the fundamental nature of government as a controlling institution that maintains order through the authorized use of violence, distinguishing it from unlawful acts by individuals or groups. It suggests that the state has the exclusive right to enforce laws and maintain social order, emphasizing the complexities and responsibilities of governance in society.
Themes
GovernmentViolenceAuthorityLegitimacyPower
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about the role of government and policing, one might cite this quote to illustrate the concept of state authority.
More from Max Weber
All quotes βThe modern view of criminal justice, broadly, is that public concern with morality or expediency decrees expiation for the violation of a norm; this concern finds expression in the infliction of punishment on the evil doer by agents of the state, the evil doer, however, enjoying the protection of a regular procedure.
Max WeberRead
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the 'disenchantment of the world.' Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.
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The purely emotional form of Pietism is, as Ritschl has pointed out, a religious dilettantism for the leisure class.
Max WeberRead
Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.
Max WeberRead
Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.
Max WeberRead
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There is nothing in the whole frame of man which seems to me so unaccountable as that thing called conscience.
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