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Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

Max Stirner

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Max Stirner
Age: 49 †
Born: 1806
Born: October 25
Died: 1856
Died: June 26
Educator
Journalist
Philosopher
Professor Of Philosophy
Translator
Writer
Johann Kaspar Schmidt
Free
Fall
Uprising
Self
Lap
Must
Whoever
Make
Fairy
Men
Gift
Responsible
Freedom

More quotes by Max Stirner

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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
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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.
Max Stirner
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When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the enjoyment of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks if I only have my dear life, he does not apply his full strength to using, i. e., enjoying, life.
Max Stirner
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In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but an immense, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud—crime, doesn't it rumble in the distant thunder, and don't you see how the sky grows ominously silent and gloomy?
Max Stirner
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A race of altruists is necessarily a race of slaves. A race of free men is necessarily a race of egoists.
Max Stirner
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Is not all the stupid chatter of most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, christianity and so forth, and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space?
Max Stirner
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Crimes spring from fixed ideas.
Max Stirner
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The object of the state is always the same: to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subjugate him.
Max Stirner
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From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world, a man seeks to find out himself and get hold of himself out of its confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.
Max Stirner
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Only the free and personal man is a good citizen (realist), and even with the lack of particular (scholarly, artistic, etc)culture, a tasteful judge (humanist).
Max Stirner
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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
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Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.
Max Stirner
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No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.
Max Stirner
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The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss.
Max Stirner
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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
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What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.
Max Stirner
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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.
Max Stirner
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Religion itself is without genius. There is no religious genius and no one would be permitted to distinguish between the talented and the untalented in religion.
Max Stirner
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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
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Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property.
Max Stirner