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.

The career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions.

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

Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

Nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.

The summum bonum of this [Puritan] ethic is the earning of more and more money combined with the strict avoidance of all enjoyment.

The purely emotional form of Pietism is, as Ritschl has pointed out, a religious dilettantism for the leisure class.