The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit Of Capitalism Quotes
"Business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the skilled higher strata of the labor force, tend to be predominantly Protestant."
"Religious allegiance is not a cause but to a certain degree a consequence of economic phenomena."
"The greater the freedom enjoyed by capitalism, the more evident this has been."
"Having a share in these economic functions presupposes either ownership of capital or an expensive education, and usually both."
"The Reformation meant less the entire removal of ecclesiastical authority over life than the replacement of the previous form of authority by a different one."
"The fact that the majority of owners of capital and people in managerial positions in business today are Protestants may be understood in part simply as a consequence of the greater average amount of wealth passed on to them."
"The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded."
"The world was all before them, where to choose their place of rest, and Providence their guide."
"It is a well-known fact that the very opposite of enjoyment of life characterized the English, Dutch, and American Puritans."
"This reversal of what we might call the 'natural' state of affairs is a definite leitmotiv of capitalism."
"Moneymaking—provided it is done legally—is, within the modern economic order, the result and the expression of diligence in one’s calling."
"The aim of a man’s life is indeed moneymaking, but this is no longer merely the means to the end of satisfying the material needs of life."
"The capitalist economic order needs this uncompromising devotion to the 'vocation' of moneymaking."
"The capitalist spirit in the sense in which we have hitherto understood it has had to prove itself in a hard struggle against a world of hostile forces."
"For anyone to make the purpose of his life’s work exclusively the idea of eventually going to one’s grave laden with a heavy weight of money and goods seems to him the product of perverse instinct, of the 'auri sacra fames.'"
"The "spirit" of capitalism could, as we have said, be understood purely as a product that has adapted to its environment."
"Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation." (Chapter IX, Of Free Will, No. 3)
"Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory." (Chapter III, Of God's Eternal Decree, No. 5)
"The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice." (Chapter III, Of God’s Eternal Decree, No. 7)
"Labor in a calling was urged as the best possible means of attaining this self-assurance." (II. The Idea of the Calling in Ascetic Protestantism)
"The exhortation of the apostle to 'make one's own calling sure' was interpreted as a duty to strive for the subjective certainty of one’s election and justification in daily struggle." (II. The Idea of the Calling in Ascetic Protestantism)
"Only a life governed by constant reflection could be regarded as overcoming the status naturalis."
"The aim was thus to train the monk—objectively speaking—to be a worker in the service of the kingdom of God."
"Puritan asceticism—like any rational asceticism—worked to enable man to demonstrate and assert his constant motives against the emotions."
"The goal of asceticism was to be able to lead a watchful, aware, alert life."
"The most important means employed by asceticism was to bring order into the conduct of life of those who practiced it."
"The link that this doctrine established between belief in absolutely binding norms and absolute determinism was, in its way, an idea of genius."
"Wasting time is the first and most serious of all sins."
"The span of life is infinitely short and precious, and must be used to secure one's own calling."
"Riches are only dangerous when they tempt us to idleness and sinful indulgence."
"The easygoing superiority of the lord and the ostentation of the upstart snob are both equally abhorrent to asceticism."
"It always benefited the tendency toward a middle-class, economically rational conduct of life."
"The Puritan ideals of life could be defeated when subjected to an unduly strong pressure from the 'temptations' of wealth."
"The entire history of the monastic orders is, in a sense, one of constant wrestling with the problem of the secularizing influence of wealth."
"The mighty 'revival' of Methodism preceded the rapid development of English industry."
"Robinson Crusoe, the isolated economic man who engages in missionary work in his spare time."
"The last remnant of 'Deo placere non potest' disappeared."
"A specifically middle-class ethic of the calling arose."
"The power of religious asceticism made available to him sober, conscientious, and unusually capable workers."
"The unequal distribution of this world’s goods was the special work of the providence of God."
"Calvin had already made the often quoted remark that only when the 'people,' that is, the mass of workers and craftsmen, were kept in poverty would they remain obedient to God."
"The idea that, in the modern age, work bears the stamp of asceticism."
"Restricting oneself to specialized work is the precondition in today’s world for any worthwhile action."
"The Puritans wanted to be men of the calling—we, on the other hand, must be."
"The cloak of Puritan asceticism has become a shell as hard as steel."
"The spirit of victorious capitalism has fled from this shell."
"The idea of the 'duty in a calling' haunts our lives like the ghost of once-held religious beliefs."
"Both [materialist and spiritual interpretations] are equally possible, but neither will serve historical truth if they claim to be the conclusion of the investigation rather than merely the preliminary work for it."
"True faith is not so much felt emotionally, as it is recognized by its fruits (love and obedience toward God)."
"Methodical practice and the habit of sanctification should bring about further growth in sanctification."
"The flash of 'clearness' about what was to be done (the result of quiet waiting for the decision) was 'a sign from God.'"
"Anyone who does not do good works is not saved."
"It is safer to rely on our (Lutheran) books than on the 'English scribblers.'"
"Genuine fear was a better sign of grace than 'security.'"
"The psychological effect of the existence of the confession was always to relieve the subject from personal responsibility for his conduct."
"A reasonable man should not be an unbeliever, and a believing man should not be unreasonable."
"To work as day laborers, not for the sake of payment, but for the sake of the calling and for the sake of the Lord and one’s neighbor."
"In no religion do we recognize as brethren those who are not washed by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ and continue thoroughly changed in the sanctification of the spirit."
"The emotional internalization of piety is by no means alien to Lutheranism, even that of the later period."
"Every penny which is paid upon yourselves and children and friends must be done as by God’s own appointment and to serve and please him."
"Couldn’t the old man retire on his $75,000 a year? No! The front of the store must be extended to a width of 400 feet. Why? That beats everything, he thinks. In the evenings, when his wife and daughters are reading together, he longs for bed. On Sundays he looks at the clock every five minutes—he can’t wait for the day to finish. What a wasted life!"
"It would have been a simple matter to go on to create a formal ‘construction’ in which, by a process of logical deduction, every ‘characteristic’ feature of modern civilization is seen to derive from Protestant rationalism. But only a dilettante, for whom the ‘social psyche’ is a ‘unity’ that can be reduced to a single formula, would adopt this approach."
"The identity of the ‘chosen few,’ the ‘invisible church,’ is known only to God. For the genuine ‘sect,’ however, the ‘purity’ of its membership is vital."
"Anyone who is excluded from the church for dishonorable conduct—or—as now—is tacitly deleted from its membership list, falls victim to a kind of social ostracism; anyone who is outside the church community is deprived of social contacts."
"Membership of a church community ‘of good repute’ guarantees the good standing of the individual, not only socially, but also, and especially, in terms of business."
"In a country like the United States, where the various associations differ little from one another, the most fundamental and universal community, the religious congregation, embraces almost all ‘social’ interests that take the individual out of his own front door."
"It was only they who gave, for example, to American democracy its characteristic flexibility of structure and its individualistic character."
"He was thus left entirely to his own resources. This ‘proof,’ manifested in each individual, then became the exclusive foundation for the social cohesion of the congregation."
"It is bureaucratic rationalism, not democracy, which leads to this thoroughgoing ‘atomization’—and it cannot be removed by the imposition of ‘order’ from above, in the manner so often favored."
"It is, of course, hard for modern man to imagine the agonizing force of such metaphysical notions."
"It was too broad in supposing a clear distinction between traditional subsistence economies and capitalist ones."
"Concern for family, striving for luxury, honor, and power are also central to the capitalist spirit."
"An entrepreneur may have a strong Berufsethik while engaging in conduct that cannot be described as moral in the accepted sense of the word."
"Weber’s 'ideal type' analysis has led him astray."
"Capitalism preceded Puritanism, the latter cannot be said to be a cause of the former."
"Weber and Troeltsch have wildly overestimated the importance of religious motives in the emergence and trajectory of capitalism."
"The capitalist spirit, according to Weber, is not the capitalist spirit per se but a particular species of it that only emerged in modern times under the influence of ascetic Protestantism."
"Weber clouds the historical issue of the spirit of capitalism by an idiosyncratic 'ideal type' that excludes big financiers and others."
"Rachfahl purports to stick to historical realities."
"The replies to Rachfahl furnish an explicit account of Weber’s methodological procedure."
"It is a typical historical process for a (state or other social) institution to continue to exist in exactly the same form as before, but to have undergone a change in its 'meaning' for historical life, and in its significance for the history of culture."
"The task which I set myself was to reveal one (particularly important) series of causes which determined the formation of one (again, particularly important) constituent component of the spirit of modern capitalism."
"The possible attitudes that we so term seem to us to be particularly 'adequate' to just those forms of organization, that is, seem to have an 'elective affinity' with them arising from internal causes."
"I should therefore like to assist my readers to make up their own minds by reminding them once more of the following."
"The reason for this is (to repeat) that the possible attitudes that we so term seem to us to be particularly 'adequate' to just those forms of organization, that is, seem to have an 'elective affinity' with them arising from internal causes."
"The capitalist spirit (as defined by Rachfahl's own words) ran riot in Venice, Genoa, Florence, Flanders, and large parts of France in the late Middle Ages."
"What I said about those characteristics of the 'capitalist spirit' which were not influenced by Protestant asceticism was therefore in fact not the sort of rubbish suggested by Rachfahl."
"It is one of the achievements of ascetic Protestantism that it works against this tendency, that it resists, in particular, 'idolatrous' tendencies."
"This is why in my essays I have merely reminded the reader of these things."
"The style in which the writer of this dissertation reproduces opinions with which he disagrees, and the way he homes in on alleged 'contradictions,' etc., bears all the hallmarks of R.’s 'critical' effort."
"The fact that the religious basis of life was completely taken for granted was what most clearly distinguished the American state, with its strict formal neutrality, from European and other democracies."
"Rachfahl himself informs us that he has become confused by my arguments. I decline to accept responsibility for this."
"Let there be no doubt about this. We are talking about trivialities such as Troeltsch’s errors regarding my relationship to Sombart, or what I had already said in my essay about the Reformed people in Hungary and similar matters."
"So we arrive at the fundamental difference (between Troeltsch and me)... the conception of the old Protestant asceticism."
"Typical of the general tenor of this so-called critique is what I can only call the little faultfinding trick."
"It is clear from my essays, to which I referred in my rebuttal, where I am in agreement with Rachfahl on the role of toleration."
"A 'constructor of history' could very easily make the mistake of deriving the character of the Dutch development from the fact that in this country Calvinism was obliged to abandon its intolerance to a particularly large extent."
"Such reductions in the volume of wealth and population have, often been the consequence of intolerance, both Catholic and Protestant."
"The Methodist institution of youth 'training' has fallen into disuse, but was once highly significant."
"An emphasis on modern subjects is an old principle of Pietist education, which, as I have indicated, has a strong religious foundation."