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.

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

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

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

Daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity.

Puritanism carried the ethos of the rational organization of capital and labor. It took over from the Jewish ethic only what was adapted to this purpose.

Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.