Quotessence
Home / Authors / Max Stirner
Max Stirner

Max Stirner Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenSelfIfsMax StirnerPeopleDoeEgoIndividualPersonsPhilosophy

Famous Max Stirner Quotes

“Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.”

PhilosophyPsychologyEgoism
Book:The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am—for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not—unique.[102] But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently—adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the—unique.”

SocietyPhilosophicalIndividualityEgoistic
Book:The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits,or,more expressively, not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently,do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others...He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.”

SelfFreedomEgoLiberationFreedom Of ThoughtMax StirnerBreaking ChainsMental Restriction
Book:The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that *you* yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again, for *your* benefit and behoof, only through that unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit." You are to benefit *yourself*, and yet you are not to seek *your* benefit”

SelfEgoBenefitMax StirnerSpooks
Book:The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“Our whole education system is calculated to produce *feelings* in us, impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out...Thus stuffed with imparted feelings, we appear before the bar of majority and are 'pronounced of age." Our equipment consists of "elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims,eternal principles.”

SelfGovernmentEducationYouthEgoEnlightenmentThoughtSystemsMax StirnerAge Of MajoritySystematic Education
Book:The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“What is the ordinary criminal but one who has committed the fatal mistake of endeavouring after what is the people's instead of seeking for what is his? He has sought despicable alien goods, has done what believers do who seek after what is God's. What does the priest who admonishes the criminal do? He sets before him the great wrong of having desecrated by his act what was hallowed by the state, its prop erty (in which, of course, must be included even the life of those who belong to the state); instead of this, he might rather hold up to him the fact that he has besmirched himself in not despising the alien thing, but thinking it worth stealing; he could, if he were not a cleric Talk with the so-called criminal as with an egoist, and he will be ashamed, not that he transgressed against your laws and goods, but that he considered your laws worth evading, your goods worth desiring; he will be ashamed that he did not - despise you and yours together, that he was too little an egoist”

PhilosophyCrimeMoralityIndependenceIndividualismEgoism
Book:The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“Negroidity represents antiquity, the time of dependence on things (on cocks' eating, birds' flight, on sneezing, on thunder and lightning, on the rustling of sacred trees, and so forth) ; Mongoloidity the time of dependence on thoughts, the Christian time. Reserved for the future are the words, 'I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner of the world of mind'.”

PhilosophyCivilizationIndependenceIndividualismMind And Body
Book:The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“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.”

SocietyNation
Book:The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“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.”

MenMightPowerfulEducationAuthorityWeakBasesRaisedCirclesEducatedJustifyPossessedSuperiorityImposingEducated Man
Book:The False Principle of Our Education: Or, Humanism and Realism
Create image

“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.”

IfsMenHandsUsedHoursTakenCuttingObjectsHe ManAmountBecomingLaborMachinesSlaveryWorkersSatisfiedFactoriesTwelveTireCondemningFactory Workers
Author:Max Stirner
Create image

“I say: liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively, not to everyone is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.”

IfsWayMayMeanDoneEnoughGivenBreakTearsLimitsRemainsAffairTireAnarchismBreak ThroughToiling
Author:Max Stirner
Create image

“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.”

MenWayNeedsIdeasFactsLyingTurnsFeltPracticeEventsExampleStudentsCollegeGoes OnPureTrainingDifficultyPracticalsMiserableExcellentApplicationRealistCultivatingCollege StudentsDrilling
Book:The False Principle of Our Education: Or, Humanism and Realism
Create image

“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?”

MenDoeDifferentReligiousMoralHe ManMoralitySakeSentimentsInwardObscureTruestIllusoryReligious Love
Author:Max Stirner
Create image

“The truth wears longer than all the gods; for it is only in the truth's service, and for love of it, that people have overthrown the gods and at last God himself. "The truth" outlasts the downfall of the world of gods, for it is the immortal soul of this transitory world of gods; it is Deity itself.”

PeopleWorldSoulLastsAtheismPositive AtheismImmortalDeitiesDownfallTransitoryImmortal Soul
Book:Stirner: The Ego and Its Own
Create image

“Before what is sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my conscience.”

PeopleLosesAttitudeAtheismJudgmentConscienceSacredHumblePositive AtheismKneesDeclarationPowerlessDeclaringBending
Book:The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority
Create image