Epictetus — "If you want to be a philosopher, prepare to be mocked."
If you want to be a philosopher, prepare to be mocked.
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More from Epictetus
"You are not your body, you are a soul."
"Every difficulty in life is a chance for us to turn inward and to discover the resources we possess to deal with that difficulty. The resources are not without, but within."
"What, then, is the proper thing to do? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it naturally happens."
"To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable; but everything reasonable may be supported."
"If a man has a bad smell, he is not to blame for it, but his clothes. If a man is ill, he is not to blame for it, but his body. If a man is a fool, he is not to blame for it, but his mind."
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.