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 ac

It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true.

One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.

it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.

The ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility are not opposites. They are complementary to one another.

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. One cannot with impunity try to transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes to figure something, even though the final result is often small indeed.