A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Power allows an individual to assert their influence over others, regardless of opposition and ethical considerations.
This quote by Max Weber addresses the nature of power in social contexts. It suggests that power is not merely about ethical or moral considerations, but about the ability to assert one's will against resistance from others. The focus is on the practical aspect of power and how it operates within societies, highlighting that the mere possession of power can lead to the exertion of influence, regardless of how it is viewed ethically by society.
Themes
PowerInfluenceSocialWillOppositionIntegrity
In practice
Example use cases
During a leadership training seminar to illustrate the complexities of power dynamics.
More from Max Weber
All quotes β'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
The 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.
Max WeberRead
The purely emotional form of Pietism is, as Ritschl has pointed out, a religious dilettantism for the leisure class.
Max WeberRead
Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.
Max WeberRead
Similar quotes
He that knows how to overcome the Lord in prayer, has heaven and earth at his disposal.
Charles SpurgeonRead
A weak understanding of what the Bible says about sin is tied to a weak understanding of what the Bible says is achieved by the cross.
D. A. CarsonRead
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made. Stronger by weakness, wiser men become As they draw near to their eternal home: Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view That stand upon the threshold of the new.
Edmund WallerRead
Hate begets hate, violence engenders violence, hypocrisy is answered by hypocrisy, war generates war, and love creates love.
Pitirim SorokinRead
If there were no way into God, I would not have lain in the grave of this body so long.
RumiRead
I just sit here and tell the story as though I can't help it. There's always something in the day that reminds me, that sets me off all hot and guilty and scared and rambling and wistful, like I am now.
Tim WintonRead