Freedom From Thought

“If what matters is to come to an understanding and to communicate, then, of course, I can only make use of human means, which are at my command because I am at the same time human. And actually I have thoughts only as human; as I, I am at the same time thoughtless. One who can’t get rid of a thought is to that extent only human, is a slave of language, this human institution, this treasury of human thoughts. Language or ‘the word’ tyrannizes most terribly over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of fixed ideas. Watch yourself now just once in your act of reflection, and you will find how you get further only by becoming thoughtless and speechless in each moment. You are not only thoughtless and speechless in sleep, but also in the deepest reflection; indeed, precisely then the most so. And only through this thoughtlessness, this unrecognized ‘freedom of thought,’ or freedom from thought, are you your own. Only from it do you reach the point of consuming language as your property.”

— Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum