“it istrue 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.”

—  Max Weber

Source: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
Source: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 124; Essay "Politics as a vocation"
Context: The problem — the experience of the irrationality of the world — has been the driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of karma, Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination and the deus absconditus, all these have grown out of this experience. Also the early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action 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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "it istrue that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who …" by Max Weber?
Max Weber photo
Max Weber 41
German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist 1864–1920

Related quotes

Max Weber photo
Jeremy Bentham photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo

“Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
Pelagius photo

“If you depart from evil but fail to do good, you transgress the law, which is fulfilled not simply by abominating evil deeds but also by performing good works’”

Pelagius (360–420) British monk

On Virginity 6.1

[Harrison, Carol, Truth in a Heresy?, The Expository Times, 2016, 112, 3, 78–82, 10.1177/001452460011200302]
On Virginity

Franz Kafka photo

“Evil knows of the Good, but Good does not know of Evil. Knowledge of oneself is something only Evil has.”

The First Octavo Notebook https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gD981HZ190BUJF-3czZNX3DsFWvqp3cq-Z4QS4d-9gw/edit?hl=en
The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)

Horace Mann photo

“I affirm, in words as true and literal as any that belong to geometry, that the man who withholds knowledge from a child not only works diabolical miracles for the destruction of good, but for the creation of evil also.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Congressional speech (1849)
Context: I affirm, in words as true and literal as any that belong to geometry, that the man who withholds knowledge from a child not only works diabolical miracles for the destruction of good, but for the creation of evil also. He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place. Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up all the vacuities of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead. Superstition is the mathematical complement of religious truth; and just so much less as the life of a human being is reclaimed to good, just so much more is it delivered over to evil. The man or the institution, therefore, that withholds knowledge from a child, or from a race of children, exercises the awful power of changing the world in which they are to live, just as much as though he should annihilate all that is most lovely and grand in this planet of ours, or transport the victim of his cruelty to some dark and frigid zone of the universe, where the sweets of knowledge are unknown, and the terrors of ignorance hold their undisputed and remorseless reign.

George MacDonald photo
Herodotus photo

“The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.”

Herodotus (-484–-425 BC) ancient Greek historian, often considered as the first historian

The words of Socrates, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius.
Misattributed

Related topics