Quotes from Max Stirner

In short, the critic is not an owner, because he still struggles with ideas as with powerful strangers, as the Christian is not the owner of his "bad desires" as long as he has to fight them; for the one who battles against vice, vice exists.

Who is this person that you call "All"?—It is "society"!—But is it corporeal, then?—We are its body!—You? Why, you are not a body yourselves;—you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too, and you, but you all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly the united society may indeed have bodies at its service, but no one body of its own. Like the "nation" of the politicians, it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its body only semblance.

it is only through the 'flesh' that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly

Language or "the word" tyrannizes hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of fixed ideas.

Devlet, eme?in köleli?i üzerine oturur. Emek, özgür oldu?u anda devlet çöker.

Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned to do without clericalism--that to live and work *for an idea*is man's calling, and according to the faithfulness its fulfilment his *human worth* is measured

When the government designates as punishable all play of mind against the state, the moderate liberals come and opine that fun, satire, wit, humor, etc., must have free play anyhow, and genius must enjoy freedom. So not the individual man indeed, but still genius , is to be free. Here the state, or in its name the government, says with perfect right: He who is not for me is against me.

Wer die Gewalt hat, der hat – Recht; habt Ihr jene nicht, so habt Ihr auch dieses nicht. Ist diese Weisheit so schwer zu erlangen? Seht doch die Gewaltigen und ihr Tun an!

Now why, if one strives for freedom out of love for the I, why not choose the I itself as beginning, middle and end ? Am I not worth more than freedom? Am I not the one who makes myself free, am I not the first? Even unfree, even in a thousand fetters, still I am; and I do not, like freedom, only exist as a future thing, in hopes, but even as the most degraded slave I am also present.

The man who is set free is nothing but a freed man, a libertinus, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin.

Whoever is a complete person does not need to be an authority.

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.

Everything is a spook

One must read the journals of this period, and must hear the philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction that one is shut up in a house with fools. 'Thou shalt not call thy brother a fool; if thou dost . . . ' But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my brothers are arch-fools.

He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be all over with lordship.

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.

Proudhon, e.g., thinks that with the sentence "Property is theft" he has at once put a brand on property. In the sense of the priestly, theft is always a crime, or at least a misdeed

Our weakness consists not in this, that we are in opposition to others, but in this, that we are not completely so; that we are not entirely severed from them, that we still seek a "Communion", a "Bond", that in communion we have an ideal. One faith, one god, one idea, one hat, for all! If all were brought under one hat, certainly no one would need to take off his hat for another anymore.

And what is our trickery, shrewdness, courage, obduracy? What else but - mind!

But, even granted that doubts, raised in the course of time against the tenants of the Christian faith, have long since robbed you of faith in the immortality of your spirit, you have nevertheless left one tenant undisturbed, and still ingenuously adhere to the one truth, that the spirit is your better part, and that the spiritual has greater claims on you than anything else

No dia em que devorares o sagrado, ele torna-se tua propriedade!

The Communists are only consistently carrying further what had already been long present during religious evolution, and especially in the State; to wit, propertylessness, i. e. the feudal system.

So the people--humanity or the family--have up to now, as it seems, played history: no egoistic interest was supposed to arise in these societies, but only universal, national, or popular interests, class interests, family interests, and "universal human interests".

Non preoccuparti delle barriere degli altri: è sufficiente che tu abbatta le tue.