Max Stirner Quotes

The difference between people and ideas is... only superficial.

The mathematics is not there till we put it there.

A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical picture.

Abstraction is an esoteric language.

All men in the abstract are just and good.

To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.

A man as he ought to be: that sounds to us as insipid as "a tree as it ought to be.

The Infinite is only a manner of speaking.

I think we can all recognize in some way or another that we as a human species, have been granted an incredible gift of intentionality and of consciousness. Perhaps this gift is a hint to how we should conduct our lives.

To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization.

It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man.

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.

We have tried to fit man into abstraction, but he does not fit.

We may smile and the dog may wag the tail, but in essence, we have a set program and those programs are similar across individuals in the species.

The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.

Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.

There are two infinities: God and stupidity.

The idea of abstract power only exists for academics, not in real life.

Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.

We murder to dissect.

The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.

Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all.

Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above or below him are serious.

The question of whether world peace will ever be possible can only be answered by someone familiar with world history. To be familiar with world history means, however, to know human beings as they have been and always will be. There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.