Epictetus — "Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Accept what is outside y…"
Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Accept what is outside your control. Willingly do what needs to be done.
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More from Epictetus
"Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.…"
"To say that 'I will do it tomorrow' is to say that 'I will not do it at all.'"
"What is the result of all this? To be free, serene, and happy."
"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."
"Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire."
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
This is a modern summary of core Stoic principles, not a single direct quote from Epictetus.
Date: c. 108 AD (approximate)
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