Epictetus — "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard …"
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things.
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More from Epictetus
"The greater part of what we say and do is unnecessary, and if a man would cut it out, he would have more leisure and less disturbance."
"Never say about anything, 'I have lost it,' but only 'I have given it back.' Has your child died? It has been given back. Has your wife died? She has been given back. Has your estate been taken from y…"
"How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?"
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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.
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