A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Max WeberRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of efficiency and clarity in bureaucratic systems.
Max Weber highlights the essential attributes of an effective bureaucratic administration, where precision, speed, and clarity combine to reduce costs and improve functionality. He argues that an optimal bureaucracy is characterized by tight organization, clear hierarchies, and the ability to execute tasks without unnecessary friction, ultimately leading to more effective governance and administrative practices.
Themes
BureaucracyEfficiencyAdministrationClarityManagement
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a business seminar discussing best practices in management.
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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.
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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.
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Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.
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Similar quotes
It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.
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As corporations gain in autonomous institutional power and be-come more detached from people and place, the human interest and the corporate interest increasingly diverge. It is almost as though we were being invaded by alien beings intent on colonizing our planet, reducing us to serfs, and then excluding as many of us as possible.
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On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.
Wendell PhillipsRead
In the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Occasionally, the whole class struggle may be summed up in the struggle for one word against another word. Certain words struggle amongst themselves as enemies. Other words are the site of an ambiguity: the stake in a decisive but undecided battle
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Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.
Lyndon B. JohnsonRead