Max Stirner quotes - page 3

Max Stirner was a German philosopher and writer, widely recognized for his work "The Ego and Its Own." His radical ideas on individualism and the rejection of societal norms made him a significant figure in the field of existentialism and anarchism. He influenced later thinkers and remains a controversial and provocative presence in modern philosophy. Here are 65 of his quotes:

Revolution is aimed at new arrangements; insurrection [Empörung] leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves.

Max Stirner

All things are Nothing to Me.

Max Stirner

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap.

Max Stirner

What is not supposed to be my concern!

Max Stirner

The freedom of man is, in political liberalism, freedom from persons, from personal dominion, from the master; the securing of each individual person against other persons, personal freedom.

Max Stirner

He who must expend his life to prolong life cannot enjoy it, and he who is still seeking for his life does not have it and can as little enjoy it.

Max Stirner

Yes, yes, children must early be made to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom 'good maxims' have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.

Max Stirner

Man has not really vanquished Shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghosts or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit.

Max Stirner

Crimes spring from fixed ideas.

Max Stirner

The moral man is necessarily narrow in that he knows no other enemy than the immoral man. He who is not moral is immoral! and accordingly reprobate, despicable, etc. Therefore, the moral man can never comprehend the egoist.

Max Stirner

Criticism actually says: You must free your I so completely from all limitations that it becomes a human I. I say: Free yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; because it is not given to everyone to break through all limits, or, more eloquently: that is not a limit for everyone which is one to the others. Consequently, don't exhaust yourself on the limits of others; it's enough if you tear down your own. Who has ever been able to break down even one limit for all people? Aren't countless people today, as at all times, running around with all the "limitations of humanity”? One who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.

Max Stirner

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

Egoism, as Stirner uses it, is not opposed to love nor to thought; it is no enemy of the sweet life of love, nor of devotion and sacrifice; it is no enemy of intimate warmth, but it is also no enemy of critique, nor of socialism, nor, in short, of any actual interest. It doesn't exclude any interest.

Max Stirner