“States last only so long as there is a ruling will and this ruling will is looked upon as tantamount to the own will. The lord's will is—law. What do your laws amount to if no one obeys them? What your orders, if nobody lets himself be ordered? The state cannot forbear the claim to determine the individual's will, to speculate and count on this. For the state it is indispensable that nobody have an own will; if one had, the state would have to exclude (lock up, banish, etc.) this one; if all had, they would do away with the state. The state is not thinkable without lordship [Herrschaft] and servitude [Knecht­schaft] (subjection); for the state must will to be the lord of all that it embraces, and this will is called the 'will of the state'.

He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be all over with lordship.”

— Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

“The own will of me is the state's destroyer; it is therefore denounced by the state as ‘self-will’. Own will and the state are powers in deadly hostility, between which no ‘perpetual peace’ is possible. As long as the state asserts itself, it represents own will, its ever-hostile opponent, as unreasonable, evil; and the latter lets itself be talked into believing this—indeed, it really is such, for no more reason than this, that it still lets itself be talked into such belief: it has not yet come to itself and to the consciousness of its dignity; hence it is still incomplete, still amenable to fine words.”

— Max Stirner

“Every state is a despotism, be the despot one or many, or (as one is likely to imagine about a republic) if all be lords, that is, despotize one over another. For this is the case when the law given at any time, the expressed volition of (it may be) a popular assembly, is thenceforth to be law for the individual, to which obedience is due from him or towards which he has the duty of obedience. If one were even to conceive the case that every individual in the people had expressed the same will, and hereby a complete ‘collective will’ had come into being, the matter would still remain the same. Would I not be bound today and henceforth to my will of yesterday? My will would in this case be frozen. Wretched stability! My creature—namely, a particular expression of will—would have become my commander. But I in my will, I the creator, should be hindered in my flow and my dissolution. Because I was a fool yesterday I must remain such my life long. So in the state-life I am at best—I might just as well say, at worst—a bondman of myself. Because I was a willer yesterday, I am today without will: yesterday voluntary, today involuntary.”

— Max Stirner

“How to change it? Only by recognizing no duty, not binding myself nor letting myself be bound. If I have no duty, then I know no law either.

‘But they will bind me!’ My will nobody can bind, and my disincli­nation remains free.

‘Why, everything must go topsy-turvy if every one could do what he would!’ Well, who says that every one can do everything? What are you there for, pray, you who do not need to put up with every­thing? Defend yourself, and no one will do anything to you! He who would break your will has to do with you, and is your enemy. Deal with him as such. If there stand behind you for your protection some millions more, then you are an imposing power and will have an easy victory. But, even if as a power you overawe your opponent, still you are not on that account a hallowed authority to him, unless he be a simpleton. He does not owe you respect and regard, even though he will have to consider your might.”

— Max Stirner

“We are accustomed to classify states according to the different ways in which ‘the supreme might’ is distributed. If an individual has it – monarchy; if all have it – democracy; etc. Supreme might then! Might against whom? Against the individual and his ‘self-will’. The state practices ‘violence’, the individual must not do so. The state's behaviour is violence, and it calls its violence ‘law’; that of the individ­ual, ‘crime [Verbrechen]’. Crime, then – so the individual's violence is called; and only by crime does he overcome [bricht] the state's viol­ence when he thinks that the state is not above him, but he is above the state.”

— Max Stirner

“Now, if I wanted to act ridiculously, I might, as a well-meaning person, admonish you not to make laws which impair my self­-development, self-activity, self-creation. I do not give this advice. For, if you should follow it, you would be unwise, and I should have been cheated of my entire profit. I request nothing at all from you; for, whatever I might demand, you would still be dictatorial lawgivers, and must be so, because a raven [Rabe] cannot sing, nor a robber [Räuber] live without robbery. Rather do I ask those who would be egoists what they think the more egoistic – to let laws be given them by you, and to respect those that are given, or to practice refractoriness, yes, complete disobedience. Good-hearted people think the laws ought to prescribe only what is accepted in the people's feeling as right and proper. But what concern is it of mine what is accepted in the nation and by the nation? The nation will perhaps be against the blasphemer; therefore a law against blasphemy. Am I not to blas­pheme on that account? Is this law to be more than an ‘order’ to me? I put the question.

Solely from the principle that all right and all authority belong to the collectivity of the people do all forms of government arise. For none of them lacks this appeal to the collectivity, and the despot, as well as the president or any aristocracy, acts and commands ‘in the name of the state’. They are in possession of the ‘authority of the state’, and it is perfectly indifferent whether, were this possible, the people as a collectivity (all individuals) exercise this state-authority, or whether it is only the representatives of this collectivity, be there many of them as in aristocracies or one as in monarchies. Always the collectivity is above the individual, and has a power which is called legitimate, which is law.”

— Max Stirner

Too cowardly to hate capitalism.
Too fragile to hate patriarchy.
Just bigoted and ignorant enough to blame feminism and reservations.

(Feeling casteist and misogynist with 69 others)

“[T]hose who are placed in positions which demand the surrender of personality, which insist on strict conformity to definite political policies and opinions, must deteriorate, must become mechanical, must lose all capacity to give anything really vital. The world is full of such unfortunate cripples. Their dream is to ‘arrive,’ no matter at what cost. If only we would stop to consider what it means to ‘arrive,’ we would pity the unfortunate victim. Instead of that, we look to the artist, the poet, the writer, the dramatist and thinker who have ‘arrived,’ as the final authority on all matters, whereas in reality their ‘arrival’ is synonymous with mediocrity, with the denial and betrayal of what might in the beginning have meant something real and ideal. The ‘arrived’ artists are dead souls upon the intellectual horizon. The uncompromising and daring spirits never ‘arrive.’ Their life represents an endless battle with the stupidity and the dullness of their time. They must remain what Nietzsche calls ‘untimely,’ because everything that strives for new form, new expression or new values, is always doomed to be untimely.”

— Emma Goldman,
Intellectual Proletarians

“But, although the individual is not man, man is yet present in the individual, and, like every spook and everything divine, has its existence in him. Hence political liberalism awards to the individual everything that pertains to him as ‘a man by birth’, as a born man, among which there are counted liberty of conscience, the possession of goods – in short, the ‘rights of man’; socialism grants to the individual what pertains to him as an active man, as a ‘laboring’ man; finally, humane liberalism gives the individual what he has as ‘a man’, that is, everything that belongs to humanity. Accordingly the single one [Einzige] has nothing at all, humanity everything; and the necessity of the ‘regeneration’ preached in Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in the completest measure. Become a new creature, become ‘man’!”

[…]

“But is my work then really, as the communists suppose, my sole competence? Or does not this consist rather in everything that I am competent for? And does not the workers' society itself have to concede this, in supporting also the sick, children, old people – in short, those who are incapable of work? These are still competent for a good deal, for instance, to preserve their life instead of taking it. If they are competent to cause you to desire their continued existence, they have a power over you. To him who exercised utterly no power over you, you would vouchsafe nothing; he might perish.”


— Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

“One will notice that I wish to be just to the Germans: I do not want to break faith with myself here. I must therefore also state my objections to them. One pays heavily for coming to power: power makes [one] stupid. The Germans — once they were called the people of thinkers: do they think at all today? The Germans are now bored with the spirit [Geist; intellect], the Germans now mistrust the spirit; politics swallows up all serious concern for really spiritual [geistige; intellectual] matters. ‘Germany, Germany above everything’ [‚Deutschland, Deutschland über alles‘]* — I fear that was the end of German philosophy. ‘Are there any German philosophers? Are there German poets? Are there good German books?’ they ask me abroad. I blush; but with the courage which I maintain even in desperate situations I reply: ‘Well, Bismarck.’ Would it be permissible for me to confess what books are read today? Accursed instinct of mediocrity!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§8. 1)


* the German national anthem

— Emma Goldman, Victims of Morality