Epictetus — "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
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More from Epictetus
"What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears."
"It is better to starve than to eat meat offered to idols."
"Never say about anything, 'I have lost it,' but only, 'I have given it back.'"
"The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best."
"Small-minded people are fond of saying, 'By Zeus, I wish I were not a philosopher!'"
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.