Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, ‘morality.’ Morality is the ‘idea’ of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an ‘intellectual’ man, a so-called independent, a ‘freethinker.’
Category Archive: 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.
The man is distinguished from the youth by the fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of everywhere fancying it amiss and wanting to improve it, i.e. model it after his ideal; in him the view that one must deal with the world according to his interest, not according to his ideals, becomes confirmed.
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!
Spiritual men have taken into their head something that is to be realized. They have concepts of love, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see realized; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one ‘from love.’ Love is to rule.
The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.
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.
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.
The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss.
Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature, from the appetites as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not let himself be determined by his appetites.