Epictetus — "If you wish to be good, know that you are bad."
If you wish to be good, know that you are bad.
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More from Epictetus
"He who is not a good servant will not be a good master."
"If a man is unhappy, this must be due to his own fault, that he has forgotten that all things are in his own power."
"If your mind is not polluted by these things, you will always be healthy."
"If you want to be rich, do not heap up riches, but diminish your desires."
"If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase."
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.