Weber, Max.  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  Trans. Talcott Parsons.  NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.

17 The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. . . . One may say that it has been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all times and in all countries of the earth, wherever the objective possibility of it is or has been given.  It should be taught in the kindergarten of cultural history that this naive idea of capitalism must be given up once and for all.  Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit.  Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering of this irrational impulse.  But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise.

21-22 The modern rational organization of the capitalistic enterprise would not have been possible without two other important factors in its development: the separation of business from the household, which completely dominates modern economic life, and closely connected with it, rational book-keeping.

35 A glance at the occupational statistics of any country of mixed religious composition brings to light with remarkable frequency a situation which has several times provoked discussion in the Catholic press and literature, and in Catholic congresses in Germany, namely, the fact that business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labor, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises, are overwhelmingly Protestant. . . .   The same thing is shown in the figures of religious affiliation almost wherever capitalism, at the time of its great expansion, has had a free hand to alter the social distribution of the population in accordance with its needs, and to determine its occupational structure.  The more freedom it has had, the more clearly is the effect shown.

36 the Reformation meant not the elimination of the Church's control over everyday life, but rather the substitution of a new form of control for the previous one.  It meant the repudiation of a control which was very lax, at that time scarcely perceptible in practice, and hardly more than formal, in favor of a regulation of the whole of conduct which, penetrating to all departments of private and public life, was infinitely burdensome and earnestly enforced.

42 the supposed conflict between other-worldliness, asceticism, and ecclesiastical piety on the one side, and participation in capitalistic acquisition on the other might actually turn out to be an intimate relationship.

            As a matter of fact it is surely remarkable, to begin with quite a superficial observation, how large is the number of representatives of the most spiritual forms of Christian piety who have sprung from commercial circles.

43 an extraordinary capitalistic business sense is combined in the same persons and groups with the most intensive forms of a piety which penetrates and dominates their whole lives.

52 Now, all [Benjamin] Franklin's moral attitudes are colored with utilitarianism.  Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they are virtues. . . .  the story in his autobiography of his conversion to those virtues

53 In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture.  It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational.  Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life.  Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naive point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence.  At the same time it expresses a type of feeling  which is closely connected with certain religious ideas.  If we thus ask, why should "money be made out of men," Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colorless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth:  "Seest thou a man diligent in his business?  He shall stand before kings" (Prov xxii. 29).

55 without doubt, in the country of Benjamin Franklin's birth (Massachusetts), the spirit of capitalism . . . was present before the capitalistic order.  There were complaints of a peculiarly calculating sort of profit-seeking in New England, as distinguished from other parts of America, as early as 1632.

55 Absolute and conscious ruthlessness in acquisition has often stood in the closest connection with the strictest conformity to tradition.  Moreover, with the breakdown of tradition and the more or less complete extension of free economic enterprise, even to within the social group, the new thing has not generally been ethically justified and encouraged, but only tolerated as a fact.  And this fact has been treated either as ethically indifferent or as reprehensible, but unfortunately unavoidable.

63 The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely essential feeling of obligation to one's job, are here most often combined with a strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance.

68 there was repeated what everywhere and always is the result of such a process of rationalization: those who would not follow suit had to go out of business.  The idyllic state collapsed under the pressure of a bitter competitive struggle, respectable fortunes were made, and not lent out at interest, but always reinvested in the business.  The old leisurely and comfortable attitude toward life gave way to a hard frugality in which some participated and came to the top, because they did not wish to consume but to earn, while others who wished to keep on with the old ways were forced to curtail their consumption.

70 The ability to free oneself from the common tradition, a sort of liberal enlightenment, seems likely to be the most suitable basis for such a business man's success.

71 the ideal type of the capitalistic entrepreneur] avoids ostentation and unnecessary expenditure, as well as conscious enjoyment of his power, and is embarrassed by the outward signs of the social recognition which he receives.  His manner of life is, in other words, often . . . distinguished by a certain ascetic tendency, as appears clearly enough in the sermon of Franklin . . . .  He gets nothing out of his wealth for himself, except the irrational sense of having done his job well.

            But it is just that which seems to the pre-capitalistic man so incomprehensible and mysterious, so unworthy and contemptible.  That anyone should be able to make it the sole purpose of his life-work, to sink into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods, seems to him explicable only as the product of a perverse instinct . . . .

83 the moral emphasis on and the religious sanction of, organized worldly labor in a calling

87 Although the Reformation is unthinkable without Luther's own personal religious development, and was spiritually long influenced by his personality, without Calvinism his work could not have had permanent concrete success.

104 a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual

105 That great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with Hellenistic scientific thought, had repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion.  The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of magical and sacramental forces on salvation, should creep in.

105 the entirely negative attitude of Puritanism to all the sensuous and emotional elements in culture and in religion.

107 the Calvinist's intercourse with his God was carried on in deep spiritual isolation. . . .  In the description of Christian's attitude after he had realized that he was living in the City of Destruction and he had received the call to take up his pilgrimage to the celestial city, wife and children cling to him, but stopping his ears with his fingers and crying, "life, eternal life," he staggers forth across the fields.

108 It seems at first a mystery how the undoubted superiority of Calvinism in social organization can be connected with this tendency to tear the individual away form the closed ties with which he is bound to this world.  But, however strange it may see, it follows from the peculiar form which the Christian brotherly love was forced to take under the pressure f the inner isolation of the individual through the Calvinistic faith.

158 Baxter's principal work is dominated  by the continually repeated, often almost passionate preaching of hard, continuous bodily or mental labor.

159 Unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace.

166 the Puritan idea of the calling and the premium it placed upon ascetic conduct was bound directly to influence the development of a capitalistic way of life.  As we have seen, this asceticism turned with all its force against one thing: the spontaneous enjoyment of life and all it had to offer.

169 in favor of sober utility as against any artistic tendencies.  This was especially true in the case of decoration of the person, for instance clothing.  That powerful tendency toward uniformity of life, which today so immensely aids the capitalistic interest in the standardization of production, had its ideal foundations in the repudiation of all idolatry of the flesh.

172 the religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the highest means to asceticism, and at the same time the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we have here called the spirit of capitalism.

172 The restraints which were imposed upon the consumption of wealth naturally served to increase it by making possible the productive investment of capital.

176 Then, as Dowden puts it, as in Robinson Crusoe, the isolated economic man who carries on missionary activities on the side takes the place of the lonely spiritual search for the Kingdom of Heaven of Bunyan's pilgrim, hurrying through the marketplace of Vanity.

180 the essential elements of the attitude which was there called the spirit of capitalism are the same as what we have just shown to be the content of the Puritan worldly asceticism, only without the religious basis, which by Franklin's time had died away.

181 The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so.  For when asceticism was carried out of the monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order.  This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force.  Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.  In Baxter's view, the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the "saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment."  But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.

182 In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport.