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
"The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going."
"Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress."
"When you have said 'Tomorrow I will begin to attend,' you must be told that you are saying this: 'Today I will be shameless, disregardful of time and place, mean; it will be in the power of others to …"
"Do not be surprised if you are sometimes troubled by external things; for it is not the things themselves that trouble you, but your judgment about them."
"To say that 'I will do it tomorrow' is to say that 'I will not do it at all.'"
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.