No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.

— Max Stirner

Nothing is more to me than myself.

— Max Stirner

Our atheists are pious people.

— Max Stirner

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.

— Max Stirner

Property exists by grace of the law. It is not a fact but a legal fiction.

— Max Stirner

The great are great only because we are on our knees. Let us rise!

— Max Stirner

The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss.

— Max Stirner

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.

— Max Stirner

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 durableness, 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.

— Max Stirner

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