Epicurus — "We must, therefore, be careful how we choose our pleasures, and how we avoid our…"
We must, therefore, be careful how we choose our pleasures, and how we avoid our pains.
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More from Epicurus
"We should not believe in fate, but in our own free will."
"We must not violate nature, but obey her. And we shall obey her if we fulfill the necessary desires and also the natural, if they bring no harm, but sternly reject the harmful."
"The flesh cries out for an end to hunger, an end to thirst, an end to cold. If a man has these, and is confident of having them in the future, he might contend in happiness even with Zeus."
"The greatest good is to be free from pain and mental disturbance."
"The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity."
About Epicurus (341-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who founded the Garden school in Athens, whose materialist atomism and pleasure-as-tranquility ethics shaped Hellenistic thought. Closely associated with Lucretius (Roman successor whose De Rerum Natura preserved Epicurean physics). For an intellectual contrast, see the Stoics (Zeno, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius), the Hellenistic ethical school of discipline-of-acceptance — Stoic 'live according to nature' and Epicurean 'pleasure and absence of pain' framed every ancient ethical decision — every Roman of Cicero's era was implicitly choosing one path or the other. The Stoic-Epicurean rivalry was the central philosophical debate of the Hellenistic and Roman world for 400 years.
The standard scholarly entry points to Epicurus's work: A.A. Long (UC Berkeley, Classics) — Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics (1974); Tim O'Keefe (Georgia State University, ancient philosophy) — Epicureanism (2010); David Sedley (Cambridge, Classics) — Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (1998). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Epicurus.