Max Stirner (1806 – 1856)
Born Johann Kaspar Schmidt, was a German philosopher who was a major influence on the nineteenth century development of ideas of nihilism, existentialism and individualist anarchism.
Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. [...] His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.
People is the name of the body, State of the spirit, of that ruling person that has hitherto suppressed me.
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.