Epictetus — "No man can rob us of our will."
No man can rob us of our will.
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More from Epictetus
"Protect what belongs to you at all costs; don't desire what belongs to another."
"Small-minded people are fond of saying, 'By Zeus, I wish I were not a philosopher!'"
"The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it."
"Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well."
"If you are grieved about anything external, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment at any moment."
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.