Max Stirner: Doing

Max Stirner was German philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Max Stirner: 102 quotes4 likes

“Do we want to put pedagogy into the hands of the philosophers? Nothing less than that! They would behave themselves awkwardly enough. It shall be entrusted only to those who are more than philosophers, who are in that respect more even than humanists or realists.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Wollen wir etwa die Pädagogik den Philosophen in die Hände spielen? Nichts weniger als das! Sie würden sich ungeschickt genug benehmen. Denen allein werde sie anvertraut, die mehr sind als Philosophen, darum aber auch unendlich mehr als Humanisten oder Realisten.
Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 19

“I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and … only in the moment when I posit myself; that is, I am creator and creature in one.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Ich setze Mich nicht voraus, weil Ich Mich jeden Augenblick überhaupt erst setze oder schaffe, und nur dadurch Ich bin, dass Ich nicht vorausgesetzt, sondern gesetzt bin, und wiederum nur in dem Moment gesetzt, wo ich mich setze, d.h. Ich bin Schöpfer un Geschöpf in Einem.
Cambridge 1995, p. 135
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

“But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man ‘entitles’ him to them, because his being man does it: what do I care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from me, then for me he has no right. His life, for example, counts to me only for what it is worth to me. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the ‘sanctuary of his inner nature’ (or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain un-aggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are mine, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my — might.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 219
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

“I say: liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively, not to everyone is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. […] He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

New York 1907, p. 187
The Ego and Its Own (1844)

“Whether nature gives me a right, or whether God, the people's choice, etc., does so, all of that is the same foreign right, a right that I do not give or take to myself. Thus the Communists say, equal labour entitles man to equal enjoyment. […] No, equal labour does not entitle you to it, but equal enjoyment alone entitles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are entitled to enjoyment. But, if you have laboured and let the enjoyment be taken from you, then – ‘it serves you right.’ If you take the enjoyment, it is your right; if, on the contrary, you only pine for it without laying hands on it, it remains as before, a, ‘well-earned right’ of those who are privileged for enjoyment. It is their right, as by laying hands on it would become your right.”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 170, 171
The Ego and Its Own (1844)

“It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish. Each sort of corresponding pride and every wind of covetousness, eagerness for office, mechanical and servile officiousness, hypocrisy, etc., is bound as much with extensive knowledge as with elegant, classical education, and since this whole instruction exercises no influence of any sort on our ethical behavior, it thus frequently falls to the fate of being forgotten in the same measure as it is not used: one shakes off the dust of the school.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 22

“Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head! You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a "fixed idea"? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (e. g.) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of — lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure; — are these not "fixed ideas"? Is not all the stupid chatter of (e. g.) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space?”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

New York 1907, p. 54, 55
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

“Because our time is struggling toward the word with which it may express its spirit, many names come to the fore and all make claim to being the right one. […] Without our assistance, time will not bring the right word to light; we must all work together on it. If, however, so much depends on us, we may reasonably ask what they have made of us and what they propose to make of us; we ask about the education through which they seek to make us creators of that word. Do they conscientiously cultivate our predisposition to become creators or do they treat us only as creatures whose nature simply permits training? […] Therefore we are concerned above all with what they make of us in the time of our plasticity; the school question is a life question.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 11

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

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 114
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

“I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 6
The Ego and Its Own (1845)