The State Is Not Above Me, But I Am Above the State

We are accustomed to classifying states according to the different ways in which "the supreme power" is distributed. If one individual has it--monarchy; if all-- democracy; etc. So the supreme power! Power against whom ? Against the individual and his "self-will." The state practices "violence;" the individual should not do this. State behavior is an act of violence, and it calls its violence "legal right"; that of the individual, "crime." Crime, so the violence of the individual is called; and he overcomes state violence only through crime, when he is of the opinion that the state is not above him, but that he is above the state.

--Max Stirner, The Unique and Its Property, trans. and ed. Wolfi Landstreicher (Baltimore: Underworld Amusements, 2017), 209.