Max Stirner Quotes

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.

All things are Nothing to Me

My power is my property. My power gives me property. My power am I myself, and through it am I my property.

The people is dead! Good-day, Self!

Is not all the stupid chatter of most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, christianity and so forth, and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space?

Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.

Revolution is aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and set no glittering hope on "institutions

We do not aspire to communal life but to a life apart.

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

The people’s good fortune is my misfortune!

It is possible I can make very little of myself; but this little is everything, and better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State.

I love men too — not merely individuals, but every one. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes me happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no “commandment of love.” I have a fellow-feeling with every feeling being, and their torment torments, their refreshment refreshes me too; I can kill them, not torture them.

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.

I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.

For only he who is alive is in the right.

If i cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with *your* essence are valuable to me.

There are intellectual vagabonds, to whom the hereditary dwelling-place of their fathers seems too cramped and oppressive for them to be willing to satisfy themselves with the limited space any more: instead of keeping within the limits of a temperate style of thinking, and taking as inviolable truth what furnishes comfort and tranquility to thousands, they overlap all bounds of the traditional and run wild with their imprudent criticism and untamed mania for doubt, these extravagating vagabonds.

I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!

What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for than the true enjoyment of life, which he discovered in having the least possible wants?

Political liberty,” what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the individual’s independence of the State and its laws? No; on the contrary, the individual’s subjection in the State and to the State’s laws... Political liberty means that the polis, the State, is free; freedom of religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means that one of my despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State, religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, and their liberty is my slavery.

Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right.

The web of hypocrisy of today hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid flies.

Our athiests are pious people.

[M]an has as much liberty as he is willing to take.

Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is - a purely egoistic cause.

If religion has set up the proposition that we are sinners altogether, I set over against it the other: we are perfect altogether! For we are, every moment, all that we can be; and we never need be more.

No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.

Man has not really vanquished shamanism and its spooks till he possesses the strength to lay aside not only the belief in ghost or in spirits, but also the belief in the spirit

Ich bin meine Gattung, bin ohne Norm, ohne Gesetz, ohne Muster und dergleichen.

Only the free and personal man is a good citizen (realist), and even with the lack of particular (scholarly, artistic, etc)culture, a tasteful judge (humanist).

God cares only for what is his, busies himself with only himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes...He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is--A purely egoistic cause.

Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and - has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.

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 every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently,do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others...He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.

Mensch, es spukt in deinem Kopfe!

Der moralische Einfluß nimmt da seinen Anfang, wo die Demütigung beginnt, ja er ist nichts anderes, als diese Demütigung selbst, die Brechung und Beugung des Mutes zur Demut herab.

Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.

Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age.

For what reason then do the realists show themselves so unfriendly toward philosophy? Because they misunderstand their own calling and with all their might want to remain restricted instead of becoming unrestricted! Why do they hate abstractions? Because they themselves are abstract since they abstract from the perfection of themselves, from the elevation of redeeming truth!

You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am—for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not—unique.[102] But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently—adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the—unique.

Habt nur den Mut, destruktiv zu sein, und ihr werdet bald sehen, welch' herrliche Blume der Eintracht aus der fruchtbaren Asche aufschießt.

All things are nothing to me.

To the believer, truths are a settled thing, a fact; to the freethinker, a thing that is still to be settled.

Entitled or unentitled — that does not concern me, if I am only powerful, I am of myself empowered, and need no other empowering and entitling.

Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property

He who has might has—right; if you have not the former, neither have you the latter. Is this wisdom so hard to attain?

Alles Heilige ist ein Band, eine Fessel.

Moral influence takes its start where humiliation begins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper down to humility.

The true human being doesn't lie in the future, an object of longing, but rather it lies in the present, existing and actual. However and whoever I may be, joyful and sorrowful, a child or an old man, in confidence or doubt, asleep or awake, I am it. I am the true human being.

But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that *you* yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again, for *your* benefit and behoof, only through that unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit." You are to benefit *yourself*, and yet you are not to seek *your* benefit

Now do you suppose unselfishness is unreal and nowhere extant? On the contrary, nothing is more ordinary! One may even call it an article of fashion in the civilized world, which is considered so indispensable that, if it cost too much in solid material, people adorn themselves with its counterfeit tinsel and feign it.

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!

Language or “the word” tyrannizes hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of fixed ideas.

Every State is a despotism, be the despot one or many. MAX STIRNER

Our whole education system is calculated to produce *feelings* in us, impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out...Thus stuffed with imparted feelings, we appear before the bar of majority and are 'pronounced of age." Our equipment consists of "elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims,eternal principles.

Moral spontaneity" corresponds entirely with "religious and orthodox philosophy", "constitutional monarchy", "the Christian state", "freedom with certain limits", or in a figure, to the hero fetters to a sick bed.

The habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are – terrified at ourselves in our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils.

In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but an immense, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud—crime, doesn't it rumble in the distant thunder, and don't you see how the sky grows ominously silent and gloomy?

Das Göttliche ist Gottes Sache, das Menschliche Sache "des Menschen". Meine Sache ist weder das Göttliche noch das Menschliche, ist nicht das Wahre, Gute, Rechte, Freie usw., sondern allein das Meinige, und sie ist keine allgemeine, sondern ist - einzig, wie Ich einzig bin.

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.

Do I write out of love for human beings? No, I write because I want to give my thoughts an existence in this world; and even if I thought that these thoughts would take away your rest and peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the destruction of many generations sprouting from this seed of thought: — still I would scatter it

Wer die Gewalt hat, der hat – Recht; habt Ihr jene nicht, so habt Ihr auch dieses nicht. Ist diese Weisheit so schwer zu erlangen? Seht doch die Gewaltigen und ihr Tun an!

Devlet, emeğin köleliği üzerine oturur. Emek, özgür olduğu anda devlet çöker.

What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing

it is only through the 'flesh' that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly

Das Gefängnis betritt man gewöhnlich nicht freiwillig und bleibt auch selten freiwillig darin, sondern hegt das egoistische Verlangen nach Freiheit.

Mit dem Ideal der absoluten Freiheit wird dasselbe Unwesen getrieben wie mit allem Absoluten.

Dem Geiste, der nach langem Mühen die Welt los geworden ist, dem weltlosen Geiste, bleibt nach dem Verluste der Welt und des Weltlichen nichts übrig, als - der Geist und das Geistige.

Our weakness consists not in this, that we are in opposition to others, but in this, that we are not completely so; that we are not entirely severed from them, that we still seek a "Communion", a "Bond", that in communion we have an ideal. One faith, one god, one idea, one hat, for all! If all were brought under one hat, certainly no one would need to take off his hat for another anymore.

Не мога наистина да отрека, че съм създаден от баща си, но веднъж създаден, ни най-малко не ме засяга защо ме е създал и каквито и да са били намеренията му относно мен, аз правя само това, което сам искам.

Perhaps I can make very little out of myself; this little, however, is all, and is better than what I allow the power of others to make out of me, through the training of custom, religion, law, the state, etc.

Who is this person that you call "All"?—It is "society"!—But is it corporeal, then?—We are its body!—You? Why, you are not a body yourselves;—you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too, and you, but you all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly the united society may indeed have bodies at its service, but no one body of its own. Like the "nation" of the politicians, it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its body only semblance.

Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned to do without clericalism--that to live and work *for an idea*is man's calling, and according to the faithfulness its fulfilment his *human worth* is measured

In short, the critic is not an owner, because he still struggles with ideas as with powerful strangers, as the Christian is not the owner of his “bad desires” as long as he has to fight them; for the one who battles against vice, vice exists.

Proudhon (Weitling too) thinks he is telling the worst about property when he calls it theft (vol.) Passing quite over the embarrassing ques­tion, what well-founded objection could be made against theft, we only ask: Is the concept 'theft' at all possible unless one allows validity to the concept 'property'? How can one steal if property is not already extant? What belongs to no one cannot be stolen; the water that one draws out of the sea he does not steal. Accordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes possible only through property. Weitling has to come to this too, as he does regard everything as the property of all: if something is 'the property of all' then indeed the individual who appropriates it to himself steals.

Therefore the Sophists, with courageous sauciness, pronounce the reassuring words, "Don't be bluffed!" and diffuse the rationalistic doctrine, "Use your understanding, your wit, your mind, against everything; it is by having a good and well-drilled understanding that one gets through the world best, provides for himself the best lot, the pleasantest life." Thus they recognize in mind man's true weapon against the world. This is why they lay such stress on dialectic skill, command of language, the art of disputation, etc. They announce that mind is to be used against everything; but they are still far removed from the holiness of the Spirit, for to them it is a means, aweapon, as trickery and defiance serve children for the same purpose; their mind is the unbribable understanding.

So the people--humanity or the family--have up to now, as it seems, played history: no egoistic interest was supposed to arise in these societies, but only universal, national, or popular interests, class interests, family interests, and "universal human interests".

Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition or status, the State or society, and is accordingly a political or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on 'institutions'. It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay.

When the government designates as punishable all play of mind against the state, the moderate liberals come and opine that fun, satire, wit, humor, etc., must have free play anyhow, and genius must enjoy freedom. So not the individual man indeed, but still genius, is to be free. Here the state, or in its name the government, says with perfect right: He who is not for me is against me.

The egoist, turning against the demands and concepts of the present, executes pitilessly the most measureless — desecration. Nothing is holy to him! It would be foolish to assert there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall be the enemy of — every higher power, while religion teaches us to make it out friend and be humble toward it.

Betrachtet einmal das Volk, das von ergebenen Patrioten geschützt wird. Die Patrioten fallen im blutigen Kampfe oder im Kampfe mit Hunger und Not; was fragt das Volk danach? Das Volk wird durch den Dünger ihrer Leichen ein "blühendes Volk"! Die Individuen sind "für die große Sache des Volkes" gestorben, und das Volk schickt ihnen einige Worte des Dankes nach und - hat den Profit davon. Das nenn' Ich Mir einen einträglichen Egoismus.

when all of them have gone your way, humanity will be buried, and on its tomb I, sole master of myself at last, I, heir to all the human race, will shout with laughter.” And so, among the ruins of the world, the desolate laughter of the individual-king illustrates the last victory of the spirit of rebellion. But at this extremity nothing else is possible but death or resurrection. Stirner, and with him all the nihilist rebels, rush to the utmost limits, drunk with destruction.

I write because I wish to make for ideas, which are my ideas, a place in the world. If I could foresee that these ideas must take from you peace of mind and repose, if in these ideas that I sow I should see the germs of bloody wars and even the cause of the ruins of many generations, I would nevertheless continue to spread them. It is neither for the love of you nor even for the love of truth that I express what I think. No—I sing! I sing because I am a singer. If I use you in this way, it is because I have need of your ears.

The fixed idea may also be perceived as 'maxim', 'principle', 'standpoint', and the like. Archimedes,86 to move the earth, asked for a standpoint outside it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the world oj mind, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences; it is heaven. Heaven is the 'standpoint' from which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and - despised. To assure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever - how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!

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 behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the individual, "crime." Crime, then,—so the individual's violence is called; and only by crime does he overcome the State's violence when he thinks that the State is not above him, but he above the State.

Spiritual people have something they've planted in their head that is supposed to be realized. They have concepts oflove, goodness, and the like, which they would like to see actualized; therefore they want to build a kingdom oflove on earth, in which no one any longer acts from self-interest, but everyone acts "from love." Love is supposed to rule. What they've planted in their head, what is one supposed to call it other than-afixed idea? Indeed, it "haunts their heads." The most oppressive phantasm is the human being. Just think of the proverb, "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions." The intention to completely actualize humanity in oneself, to completely become human, is of such a ruinous sort; such are the intentions to become good, noble, loving, etc.

Therefore Socrates says: "You must be 'pure-hearted' if your shrewdness is to be valued." At this point begins the second period of Greek liberation of the mind, the period of purity of heart. For the first was brought to a close by the Sophists in their proclaiming the omnipotence of the understanding. But the heart remained worldly-minded, remained a servant of the world, always affected by worldly wishes. This coarse heart was to be cultivated from now on - the era of culture of the heart. But how is the heart to be cultivated? What the understanding; this one side of the mind, has reached - namely, the capability of playing freely with and over every concern - awaits the heart also; everything worldly must come to grief before it, so that at last family, commonwealth, fatherland, and the like, are given up for the sake of the heart, that is, of blessedness, the heart's blessedness.

Now one hears the admonitions that one "is to honor all opinions and convictions," that "every conviction is authorized," that one must be "tolerant to the views of others," etc. But "your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways." Or rather, I mean the reverse: Your thoughts are my thoughts, which I dispose of as I will, and which I strike down unmercifully; they are my property, which I annihilate as I list. I do not wait for authorization from you first, to decompose and blow away your thoughts. It does not matter to me that you call these thoughts yours too, they remain mine nevertheless, and how I will proceed with them is my affair, not a usurpation. It may please me to leave you in your thoughts; then I keep still. Do you believe thoughts fly around free like birds, so that every one may get himself some which he may then make good against me as his inviolable property? What is flying around is all—mine.

Warum wollen gewisse Oppositionen nicht gedeihen? Lediglich aus dem Grunde, weil sie die Bahn der Sittlichkeit oder Gesetzlichkeit nicht verlassen wollen. Daher die maßlose Heuchelei von Ergebenheit, Liebe usw., an deren Widerwärtigkeit man sich täglich den gründlichsten Ekel vor diesem verdorbenen und heuchlerischen Verhältnis einer »gesetzlichen Opposition« holen kann. – In dem sittlichen Verhältnis der Liebe und Treue kann ein zwiespältiger, ein entgegengesetzter Wille nicht stattfinden; das schöne Verhältnis ist gestört, wenn der Eine dies und der Andere das Umgekehrte will. Nun soll aber nach der bisherigen Praxis und dem alten Vorurteil der Opposition das sittliche Verhältnis vor allem bewahrt werden. Was bleibt da der Opposition übrig? Etwa dies, eine Freiheit zu wollen, wenn der Geliebte sie abzuschlagen für gut findet? Mit nichten! Wollen darf sie die Freiheit nicht; sie kann sie nur wünschen, darum »petitionieren«, ein »Bitte, bitte!« lallen. Was sollte daraus werden, wenn die Opposition wirklich wollte, wollte mit der vollen Energie des Willens?

Self-denial is common to the holy along with the unholy, the pure and the impure. The impure person denies all "better feelings;' all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the desire that rules him. The pure person denies his natural relationship to the world ("denies the world") and follows only the "aspiration" that rules him. Driven by the thirst for money, the greedy person denies all warnings of the conscience, all feelings of honor, all gentleness and all compassion : he puts every consideration out of sight: the desire carries him away. The holy person desires in the same way. He makes himself the "laughing-stock of the world;' is hard-hearted and "strictly righteous"; because the aspiration carries him away. As the unholy person denies himself before Mammon, so the holy person denies himself before God and the divine laws. [...] The self-deniers must take the same path as holy people as they do as unholy people; and as the latter sink little by little to the fullest measure of self denying meanness and lowness, so the former must ascend to the most humiliating loftiness. The earthly Mammon and the heavenly God both demand exactly the same degree of-self-denial. The lowly, like the lofty, reach out for a "good;' the former for the material good, the latter for the ideal, the so-called "highest good"; and in the end, both also complete each other again, since the "materially minded" person sacrifices everything to an ideal specter, his vanity, and the "spiritually minded" person to a material enjoyment, good living.

Acaba insancıl kişi insana dair bütün olasılıkları her şeyi insana mahsus diye tanımlayacak kadar liberal midir? Tam tersine!Belki bir fahişe hakkında ahlâk açısından dar kafalı bir burjuva kadar ön yargılı davranmaz ama bir kadının bedenini para kazanma makinesi olarak kullanması o kadını bir insan olarak hor görmesine neden olur . Onu şöyle yargılar fahişe bir insan değildir ya da bir kadın fahişelik yaptığı takdirde insan olmaktan çıkmıştır gayri insandır. Hatta Yahudi, Hristiyan, imtiyazlı kişi, dini alimi ve bunun gibiler insan değildirler. Sen Yahudiliğin ya da başka bir niteliğin açısından insan değilsin. Al işte gene bir buyurgan önerme. Seni başkalarından farklı kılan her şeyi üzerinden at, eleştir ve kurtul. Yahudi olma! Hristiyan olma! Ve bunlar gibi biri de olma! insan ol, salt insan! İnsanlık niteliğini, seni kısıtlayan her türlü alın yazısının karşısına çık, o sayede kendini insan kıl ve seni kısıtlayan engellerden kurtul, özgürleş, kendini özgür insan haline getir, yani insanlığı seni her bakımdan belirleyen Öz'ün olarak kabul et.Ben diyorum ki sen bir Yahudiden bir Hıristiyandan ve benzerlerinden daha fazla birisin hatta sen insandan daha fazlasın. Bütün bu saydıklarım birer düşüncedir, oysa sen bedene sahip birisin. sen "soyut bir insan" haline gelebileceğini mi sanıyorsun. Bizden sonraki kuşaklar bizim yıkmaya gücümüzün yetmediği bazı önyargıları ve engelleri ortadan kaldırmak zorunda kalmayacaklar mı sanıyorsun. Acaba 40 ya da 50 yaşında gelince artık daha ileriki günlerde kendinde çözülecek bir şeylerin bulunmayacağı kadar gelişerek insan olacağını mı umuyorsun. Bizden sonraki kuşakların insanları bizim şimdi yokluğunu hissetmediğimiz bazı özgürlükleri elde edebilmek için mücadele etmek zorunda kalacaklardır. O gelecekteki özgürlüğe neden ihtiyaç duyuyorsun? sen insan olmadan kendine hiçbir değeri vermeyeceksen, insanın ya da insanlığın mükemmeliğe erişebilmesi için kıyamet gününe kadar beklemen gerekecektir. Ama sen kuşkusuz daha önce öleceğine göre, zaferinin ödülü'nü ne zaman alacaksın?

A minha causa é a causa de nada.

But, even granted that doubts, raised in the course of time against the tenants of the Christian faith, have long since robbed you of faith in the immortality of your spirit, you have nevertheless left one tenant undisturbed, and still ingenuously adhere to the one truth, that the spirit is your better part, and that the spiritual has greater claims on you than anything else

Je vois des hommes plongés dans les ténèbres de la superstition, harcelés par un essaim de fantômes. Si je cherche, dans la mesure de mes forces à projeter la lumière du jour sur ces apparitions de la nuit, croyez-vous que j'obéisse à mon amour pour vous ? J'écris peut-être par amour pour les hommes ? Eh non! j'écris parce que je veux faire à des idées qui sont mes idées une place dans le monde [...] Faites-en ce que vous voudrez, c'est votre affaire et je ne m'en inquiète pas [...] Non seulement ce n'est pas pour l'amour de vous j'exprime ce que je pense, mais ce n'est pas même pour l'amour de la vérité.

What is it, then, that is called a “fixed idea?” An idea that has subjected the man to itself.

The man who is set free is nothing but a freed man, a libertinus, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion’s skin.

The thinker is distinguished from the believer only by believing much more than the latter, who on his part thinks of much less as signified by his faith (creed). The thinker has a thousand tenets of faith where the believer gets along with few; but the former brings coherence into his tenets, and takes the coherence in turn for the scale to estimate their worth by. If one or the other does not fit into his budget, he throws it out. The thinkers run parallel to the believers in their pronouncements. Instead of “If it is from God you will not root it out,” the word is “If it is from the truth, is true, etc.”; instead of “Give God the glory”—“Give truth the glory.” But it is very much the same to me whether God or the truth wins; first and foremost I want to win.

The young are of age when they twitter like the old.

Aus fixen Ideen entstehen die Verbrechen.