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Max Stirner
70 quotes
“Apart from any other basis which might justify a superiority, education, as a power, raised him who possessed it over the weak, who lacked it, and the educated man counted in his circle, however large or small it was, as the mighty, the powerful, the imposing one: for he was an authority.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wollen wir etwa die Pädagogik den Philosophen in die Hände spielen? Nichts weniger als das! Sie würden sich ungeschickt genug benehmen. Denen allein werde sie anvertraut, die mehr sind als Philosophen, darum aber auch unendlich mehr als Humanisten oder Realisten.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, so it is that knowledge itself must die in order to blossom forth again in death as will; the freedom of thought, belief, and conscience, these wonderful flowers of three centuries will sink back into the lap of mother earth so that a new freedom, the freedom will, will be nourished with its most noble juices.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The will is not fundamentally right, as the practical ones would like very much to assure us; one may not pass over the desire for knowledge in order to stand immediately in the will, but knowledge perfects itself to will when it desensualizes itself and creates itself as a spirit "which builds its own body.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish. Each sort of corresponding pride and every wind of covetousness, eagerness for office, mechanical and servile officiousness, hypocrisy, etc., is bound as much with extensive knowledge as with elegant, classical education, and since this whole instruction exercises no influence of any sort on our ethical behavior, it thus frequently falls to the fate of being forgotten in the same measure as it is not used: one shakes off the dust of the school.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the contrary, to educate rational people, that should be sufficient; it is not really intended for sensible people; to understand things and conditions, there is the matter ended,—to understand oneself does not seem to be everyman's concern.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the pedagogical as in certain other spheres freedom is not allowed to erupt, the power of the opposition is not allowed to put a word in edgewise: they want submissiveness. Only a formal and material training is being aimed at and only scholars come out of the menageries of the humanists, only "useful citizens" out of those of the realists, both of whom are indeed nothing but subservient people. Our good background of recalcitrancy [sic] gets strongly suppressed and with it the development of knowledge to free will. The result of school is then philistinism.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If one awakens in men the idea of freedom then the free men will incessantly go on to free themselves; if on the contrary, one only educates them, then they will at all times accommodate themselves to circumstance in the most highly educated and elegant manner and degenerate into subservient cringing souls.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus the radii of all education run together into one center which is called personality.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difficulty in our education up till now lies, for the most part, in the fact that knowledge did not refine itself into will, to application of itself, to pure practice. The realists felt the need and supplied it, though in a most miserable way, by cultivating idea-less and fettered "practical men." Most college students are living examples of this sad turn of events. Trained in the most excellent manner, they go on training; drilled they continue drilling.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] then the necessary decline of non-voluntary learning and rise of the self-assured will which perfects itself in the glorious sunlight of the free person may be somewhat expressed as follows: knowledge must die and rise again as will and create itself anew each day as a free person.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is not supposed to be my concern! First and foremost, the Good Cause, then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. "Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 5
“I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 6
“The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is — unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 7
“Atheists keep up their scoffing at the higher being, which was also honoured under the name of the 'highest' or être suprême, and trample in the dust one 'proof of his existence' after another, without noticing that they themselves, out of need for a higher being, only annihilate the old to make room for a new.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 38-39
“Feuerbach … recognizes … "even love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, since religious love loves man only for God’s sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only.” Is this different with moral love? Does it love the man, this man for this man’s sake, or for morality’s sake, for Man’s sake, and so—for homo homini Deus—for God’s sake?”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 56
“The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, pp. 61-62
“Political freedom means this: that the polis, the state, is free; religious freedom this: that religion is free, just as freedom of conscience indicates that conscience is free; thus, it does not that I am free from state, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my freedom, but the freedom of a power that rules and vanquishes me; it means that one of my oppressors, like state, religion, conscience, is free.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 79
“Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. [...] His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 108
“The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 114
“The workers have the most enormous power in their hands, and if one day they became truly aware of it and used it, then nothing could resist them; they would only have to stop work and look upon the products of work as their own and enjoy them. This is the meaning of the labor unrest that is looming here and there. The state is founded on the-slavery of labor. If labor becomes free, the state is lost.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Landstreicher 2017, p. 133
“Ich setze Mich nicht voraus, weil Ich Mich jeden Augenblick überhaupt erst setze oder schaffe, und nur dadurch Ich bin, dass Ich nicht vorausgesetzt, sondern gesetzt bin, und wiederum nur in dem Moment gesetzt, wo ich mich setze, d.h. Ich bin Schöpfer un Geschöpf in Einem.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 135
“Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for 'one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right'. You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he who has might 'stands above the law'. How does this prospect taste to you, you 'law-abiding' people? But you have no taste!”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 151
“The habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are — terrified at ourselves in our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 162
“Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all — why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end?”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 163
“Freedom" awakens your rage against everything that is not you; "egoism" calls you to joy over yourselves, to self-enjoyment.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 163
“For the state it is indispensable that nobody have an own will; if one had, the state would have to exclude (lock up, banish, etc.) this one; if all had, they would do away with the state. (...) The own will of me is the state's destroyer; it is therefore denounced by the state as 'self-will'. Own will and the state are powers in deadly hostility, between which no 'perpetual peace' is possible. As long as the state asserts itself, it represents own will, its ever-hostile opponent, as unreasonable, evil; and the latter lets itself be talked into believing this.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 174, 175
“Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 182
“It would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall be the enemy of every higher power, while religion teaches us to make it our friend and be humble toward it.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 184
“The State’s behavior is violence, and it calls its violence “law”; that of the individual, “crime.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Great Quotations (1960) by George Seldes, p. 664
“Liberty of the people is not my liberty!”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 190
“A people cannot be free otherwise than at the individual's expense; for it is not the individual that is the main point in this liberty, but the people. The freer the people, the more bound the individual; the Athenian people, precisely at its freest time, created ostracism, banished the atheists, poisoned the most honest thinker.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 190
“The tiger that assails me is in the right, and I who strike him down am also in the right. I defend against him not my right, but myself.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: S. Byington, trans. (1913), p. 191
“Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 192
“The republic is nothing whatever but – absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a 'majesty'.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 202, 203
“If the church had deadly sins, the state has capital crimes; if the one had heretics, the other has traitors; the one ecclesiastical penalties, the other criminal penalties; the one inquisitorial processes, the other fiscal; in short, there sins, here crimes, there inquisition and here – inquisition. Will the sanctity of the state not fall like the church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its highness, the humility of its 'subjects', will this remain? Will the 'saint's' face not be stripped of its adornment?”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 211, 212
“History seeks for man: but he is I, you, we. Sought as a mysterious essence, as the divine, first as God, then as man (humanity, humaneness, and mankind), he is found as the individual, the finite, the unique one.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 217
“If religion has put forward the proposition that we are all of us sinners, I set another against it: we are all of us perfect! Because, in each moment, we are all we can be, and never need to be more.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 236
“One is not worthy to have what one, through weakness, lets be taken from him; one is not worthy of it because one is not capable of it.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love men too, not merely individuals, but every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes me happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no 'commandment of love'.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 258
“Every love to which there clings but the smallest speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes that he owes the object of his love anything loves romantically or religiously.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 260
“Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure for my thoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up from this seed of thought – I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 262, 263
“A word of honour, an oath, is one only for him whom I entitle to receive it; he who forces me to it obtains only a forced, a hostile word, the word of a foe, whom one has no right to trust; for the foe does not give us the right.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 269
“An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition and self-renouncing love ought at least to have lost its seductive plausibility when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has left nothing behind but the – misery of today. Why then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us better times? Why not rather hope for them from usurpation? Salvation comes no longer from the giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the taker, the appropriator (usurper), the owner. Communism, and, consciously, egoism-reviling humanism, still count on love.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 274
“Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give you out for, and you have more power; look upon yourself as more, and you have more.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cambridge 1995, p. 318
“I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique. In the unique one the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I concern myself for myself, the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say: All things are nothing to me.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 366
“People is the name of the body, State of the spirit, of that ruling person that has hitherto suppressed me.”
Max Stirner (1806–1856) said by 1856 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dover 2005, p. 242