Ben > Ben's Quotes

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”
― Aristotle

“Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”
― Aristotle

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”
― Epictetus

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
― Plato

“Those who tell the stories rule society.”
― Plato

“In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.”
― Plato

“You should not honor men more than truth.”
― Plato

“χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά

Nothing beautiful without struggle.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Character is simply habit long continued.”
― Plato

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
― Aristotle

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
― Aristotle

“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.”
― Aristotle

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“The more you know, the more you know you don't know.”
― Aristotle

“Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“Through discipline comes freedom.”
― Aristotle

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.”
― Epictetus

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”
― Epictetus

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”
― Epictetus

“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
― Epictetus

“First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.”
― Epictetus

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
― Epictetus

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.”
― Epictetus (From Manual 51)

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;
he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”
― Epictetus

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”
― Epictetus

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
― Epictetus

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
― Epictetus