A Quote by Max Weber
The great virtue of bureaucracy - indeed, perhaps its defining characteristic ~ was that it was an institutional method for applying general rules to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and predictable.
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I have an institutional fear of big government. I have an institutional opposition to bureaucracy.
In the Small group the individual can know the effects of his actions on his several fellows, and the rules may effectively forbid him to harm them in any manner and even require him to assist them in specific ways. In the Great Society many of the effects of a person's actions on various fellows must be unknown to him. It can, therefore, not be the specific effects in the particular case, but only rules which define kinds of actions prohibited or required, which must serve as guides to the individual.
It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced.
Although I am still in favour of a National Government in these difficult times, and shall probably be found in the great majority of cases in the Government Lobby, there are some issues that have arisen, or are likely to arise, upon which I am unable to give the Government the support which it has, perhaps, the right to expect from those receiving the Government Whip. It occurs to me, therefore, that it would perhaps be more satisfactory if I was no longer regarded as being among the supporters of the present Administration.
The great difficulty in education is that we give rules instead of inspiring sentiments. ... it is not possible to make rules enough to apply to all manner of cases; and if it were possible, a child would soon forget them. But if you inspire him with right feelings, they will govern his actions.
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions. But there is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.
Like 'real', 'free' is only used to rule out the suggestion of some or all of its recognized antitheses. As 'truth' is not a name of a characteristic of assertions, so 'freedom' is not a name for a characteristic of actions, but the name of a dimension in which actions are assessed.
I see racism as institutional: the rules are different for me because I'm black. It's not necessarily someone's specific attitude against me; it's just the fact that I, as a black man, have a much harder time making an art-house movie and getting it released than a white person does about their very white point of view. That's racism.
We should evaluate judges and judicial nominees based on the general process for applying the law to any legal disputes, not on the specific result in a particular case or dispute.
General rules will bear hard on particular cases.
General revenue - what taxpayers are willing to give government, what they think is fair to give government - is not going to grow at the same amount that the federal government basically forces us to spend on Medicaid.
`Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government.
In this science the illustrations and examples are not confined in their effect merely to the practice they afford in the analytical art, but [...] they also store the mind with independent geometrical and physical knowledge. Besides, it should be considered, that the only effectual method of impressing abstract formulae and rules upon the memory, and, indeed, of making them fully and clearly apprehended by the understanding, is by examples of their practical application.
We're concerned with a powerful government who is telling General Motors now, maybe, what they can charge for their automobiles. Indeed, if the government owns 61 percent, they can do that.
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