Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized act.

specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.

The nation is burdened with the heavy curse on those who come afterwards. The generation before us was inspired by an activism and a naive enthusiasm, which we cannot rekindle, because we confront tasks of a different kind from those which our fathers faced.

The organization of ofices follows the principle of hierarchy ... each lower office is under the control and supervision of a higher one

A government is an institution that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.

No sociologist should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time.