Epictetus — "Freedom is not the right to do what you want, but the power to do what is right."
Freedom is not the right to do what you want, but the power to do what is right.
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More from Epictetus
"If you want to be a great writer, write great books. If you want to be a great painter, paint great pictures. But if you want to be a great philosopher, be a great human being."
"Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own resources. The challenges to our spirit are not to be avoided, but embraced."
"It is a universal law — have no illusion — that every creature alive is attached to nothing so much as to its own self-interest."
"What would it be like to be a donkey? To be driven by a stick, to carry burdens, to have no choice? It would be a simple life, wouldn't it?"
"What is the result of all this? To be free, serene, and happy."
About Epictetus (c. 50-135 CE)
Greek Stoic philosopher and former slave whose Discourses (recorded by his student Arrian) shaped Marcus Aurelius and the modern Stoic revival. Closely associated with Seneca (earlier Roman Stoic) and Marcus Aurelius (his student-by-text on the imperial throne). For an intellectual contrast, see Epicurus, Greek philosopher of pleasure-as-tranquility — the Stoic-Epicurean rivalry was the central philosophical debate of the Hellenistic and Roman world for 400 years — Epicurean materialist hedonism is the precise alternative the Stoic discipline-of-acceptance was built against.
The standard scholarly entry points to Epictetus's work: A.A. Long (UC Berkeley, Classics) — Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002); Pierre Hadot (Collège de France) — Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995); Anthony R. Birley (Manchester, Roman historian) — Marcus Aurelius (1987) — the standard biography of Epictetus's most famous student. These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Epictetus.
Details
While this encapsulates a core Stoic idea, the exact phrasing is more of a modern summary.
Date: c. 108 AD (approximate)
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