Max Stirner Quotes

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.

The object of the state is always the same: to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subjugate him.

For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him.

Reduced to its lowest terms, the great struggle which now rocks the whole earth more and more takes on the character of a struggle of the individual versus the state.

The basic principle that governs the relation between a state and its people --a total and unconditional subordination and submission of individuals and classes to the state…

The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

Government money only pays for the "liberties" the government thinks you should have, and therefore it can determine how you exercise them. That turns liberties into privileges dispensed at the whim of the state.

Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

We have to recognize that the freedom of the individual has to be protected not only from the power of the state, but even more so from economic and societal power.

Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.

Every time the government grows we lose more of who we are.

I don't like the idea that the government has so much of a say in things.

The passion and will for freedom is always contradicted by the necessity of the state.

Government power, juxtaposed to private power, is a balance.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

It has been held, right up to the present day, that the freedom of individual must take second place to the security of the State.....

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

There is the great, silent, continuous struggle: the struggle between the State and the Individual; between the State which demands and the individual who attempts to evade such demands. Because the individual, left to himself, unless he be a saint or hero, always refuses to pay taxes, obey laws, or go to war.

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

As soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individuals mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest details.

You have to ask yourself, 'Who owns me? Do I own myself or am I just another piece of government property?'

Individual liberty depends upon keeping government under control.