Epictetus — "To say that 'I will do it tomorrow' is to say that 'I will not do it at all.'"
To say that 'I will do it tomorrow' is to say that 'I will not do it at all.'
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More from Epictetus
"If you would not be a man of many words, be a man of many deeds."
"If you want to be rich, do not seek to increase your possessions, but to decrease your desires."
"Choose to be either free or a slave, enlightened or a fool, a thoroughbred or a nag. Either resign yourself to a life of abuse till you die, or escape it immediately. For God's sake, don't put up with…"
"Remember that if you are doing something for your own good, you must not be ashamed of it, even if the mob is going to misinterpret it."
"If a man has a bad smell, he knows it not, but his neighbor knows it. So too with our faults."
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.