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The great actors and theorists of twentieth-century politics, on the right and left, agree on this point: Max Weber and Vladimir Lenin say, in almost identical words, that with regard to the use of force the state is always a dictatorship.
--
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, in Multitude : War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004)

 

Vladimir Lenin

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Max Weber and Vladimir Lenin say, in almost identical words, that with regard to the use of force the state is always a dictatorship.

 

Max Weber

 

The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge — not even in the long run.

 

John N. Gray

 

One indication of the importance of Nietzsche is the pantheon of major twentieth century intellectuals whom he influenced. ¶ He was an influence on Jean-Paul Sartre and Hermann Hesse, major writers, both of whom won Nobel Prizes. He was an influence on thinkers as diverse in their outlooks as Ayn Rand and Michel Foucault. Rand’s politics are classically liberal -- while Foucault’s are far Left, including a stint as a member of the French Communist Party. There is the striking fact that Nietzsche was an atheist, but he was an influence on Martin Buber, one of the most widely-read theologians of the twentieth century. And Nietzsche said harsh things about the Jews [...] but he was nonetheless admired by Chaim Weizmann, a leader of the Zionist movement and first president of Israel.

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

"Evolution was Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s problem. Lenin lead the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and took over Russia. He killed the Zar [sic] and his family in cold blood. There would not be communism in Russia today if had not been for Charles Darwin's book on evolution."

 

Kent Hovind

 

In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton. In the nineteenth century, with Newtonian physics pretty well assimilated and a lot of work in thermodynamics going on, man was looked on as a heat engine, about 40 per cent efficient. Now in the twentieth century, with nuclear and subatomic physics a going thing, man had become something which absorbs X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons.

 

Thomas Pynchon