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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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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
Ideals
Infatuated
Sacred
Infatuation
Interest
Extends
Persons
Floats
Person
Account
Men
Ideal
Leaves
Accounts
Spook

More quotes by Max Stirner

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Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.
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.
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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.
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God sinks into dust before man.
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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.
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?
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What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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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Crimes spring from fixed ideas.
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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A race of altruists is necessarily a race of slaves. A race of free men is necessarily a race of egoists.
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We do not aspire to communal life but to a life apart.
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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
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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.
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Freedom cannot be granted. It must be taken.
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If it is right for me, it is right. It is possible that it is wrong for others: let them take care of themselves!
Max Stirner